Walk around the city: pushchairs, parking tickets and sidewalks

Постоянный автор «It’s My City», студент из Испании, Эдгар Бланко (Edgar Blanco) давно ничего не писал о городе, потому что был занят сдачей экзамена по русскому языку и небольшим путешествием по нашей стране. Недавно он вернулся в Екатеринбург и решил поделиться своим мнением о проблемах, которые волнуют его уже давно, — о пробках на улицах нашего города, о плохом состоянии дорог и об автомобилях, которые паркуют в неприспособленных для этого местах.

The relationship between cities and cars is always difficult. And the problem is that Yekaterinburg is not an exception. However, many cities have found solutions that gradually make them a better place to live.

Consider the data: the official number of vehicles per 1000 of people in Russia was estimated as 170 in 2007 and 270 in 2011. Although the data seems exaggerated, the average growth in the number of vehicles in Russian cities is between 15-25% per year. This means that the number of vehicles doubles every 5 years. Nevertheless, as we all know, the number of roads remains the same.

In Yekaterinburg the traffic is so intense that there are permanent jams, and the repair of any road causes chaos in the city. Even on the weekends we can’t speak about empty streets.

The increase in the number of vehicles also implies the need to park them somewhere: most of the buildings do not have underground parking, and parking areas are arranged around them. The actual situation has constrained the drivers to park their vehicles in areas designated for pedestrians. This has become normal in the city, and in many cases pedestrians have to walk dodging parked cars or walking along the road.

Moreover, it seems that in Yekaterinburg there are no rules of where you can or cannot park, and if someone knows them — nobody cares. This makes me believe that Yekaterinburg is a city ruled by the “ungovernable”. I started to think that the city administration doesn’t understand that traffic fines are an effective way to raise money in the short term and to regulate the traffic in the medium term. Everybody understands that if there is no place to park it is better not to drive at all.

The maintenance of sidewalks and areas for pedestrians is also related to this issue. In the city center the pedestrian areas are in good condition and more or less defined. But as we move away from downtown, the sidewalks begin to disappear, and it starts to be complicated to distinguish parking from pedestrian areas. Consider for a single second the elderly people and the pushchairs (both are quite abundant here) – we surely all have seen more than once a mother pushing a baby’s pushchair down the road because there is no sidewalk or because it is occupied by vehicles. And once again nobody seems to care about it.

However, if you think that the traffic problem affects only the center of the city, you are mistaken. This issue affects the entire city, pedestrians and drivers. Yekaterinburg is not designed for the number of vehicles that exists here today. And every day by this high number of vehicles in circulation there are committed more traffic violations that are justified, endangering both pedestrians and drivers.

I don’t like to complain if I can’t propose a solution. And so my proposal is to set limits on downtown parking areas, narrow areas and establish control and regulation measures through fines. If the city administration does not have the means to regulate it, dealerships should be created for companies to control the areas and collect the fines. To do this efficiently, it is also necessary to establish control regulations to protect the rights of citizens. Nowadays there is the technology that enables the efficient track and control of the controllers themselves to prevent any abuses towards citizens. The money obtained from parking should be used for investments in new infrastructure and for improvement of the existing one – that is something the city urgently needs.

Фотографии Тимофея Балдина