Construction of Ring Road Hits Snag
By Vladimir Kovalyev
Staff Writer
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Sergey Grachev / The St. Petersburg Times
The first section of the Ring Road, near Vyborgskoye Shosse to the north of the city.
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Construction of the ambitious $1 billion Ring Road around St. Petersburg could be delayed by a recent Supreme Court decision, project managers and Legislative Assembly lawmakers said on Monday. The court ruled last week that the federal government had broken at least five federal laws, the Land Code and the Federal City Development Code with a decree it issued in March in order to speed up construction of the project. The 154-kilometer Ring Road was begun in 1994 and is intended to reduce the volume of traffic in downtown streets by as much as 50 percent. The project includes a 1.8-kilometer suspension bridge across the Neva River and a flood-control dam in the Gulf of Finland. The Supreme Court ruling came in response to a suit filed this summer by the Izhora Green Movement, a non-governmental organization based in the Frun zensky District, that alleged that the rights of area residents had been infringed by the project management, particularly by a government order this spring authorizing construction to proceed. "[The project's managment] has completely ignored the interests, rights and opinions of the local population and local self-government bodies, including those of Metallostroi, with a population of 30,000; Ust-Izhora; and Pontonny," the Izhora Green Movement petition reads. According to a project document entitled "The Structure of Traffic Flow on the Ring Road," traffic volume on this part of the road will increase by nine times by 2020, reaching an estimated 45,300 vehicles per day. Vera Gordienko, head of the Izhora Green Movement, authored the petition, in which she complained that construction on the project began even before a plan had been approved or required state environmental and sanitation reports had been filed. She also noted that the views of local residents had not been taken into consideration. "No financing has been allocated and no measures have been planned to reduce the impact of traffic noise and exhaust fumes along the section from St. Petersburg to Kirovsk, which is a clear violation of our constitutional right to a safe environment," Gordienko said. Sergei Podkuiko, a spokesperson for the project management, confirmed that the documentation cited by Gordienko had not been prepared in advance. "Government decree No. 305 authorized us to expedite construction in this way in order to complete the work more quickly," Podkuiko said on Monday. "The project plan will be approved on Oct. 15, which will eliminate one of the major reasons for the suit." In the summer of 1998, the city administration took over control of the Ring Road project because the previous management had had little success attracting foreign investment to the project. The city oversaw the completion of a 22-kilometer section on the north side of St. Petersburg last year. Last year's municipal budget allocated about $7.5 million for the project. However, the federal government felt that progress was still too slow and direct control was handed over to the Transport Ministry last year. Since then, attention has focused largely on the eastern segment of the Ring Road, the cost of which is estimated to be about $700 million. The Transport Ministry allocated 2 billion rubles ($67 million) of this funding in the 2001 federal budget, of which 1.5 billion has been spent, and intends to include the remainder in the 2002 and 2003 budgets. This sum represents about half of the total funding that the federal government has promised to prepare St. Petersburg for its tercentennial in May 2003. After government decree No. 305, the Transport Ministry held a tender in March to choose construction companies to build this part of the road, and construction began this summer. The eastern portion of the Ring Road is scheduled to be opened by May 2003. However, this timetable could be upset by the Supreme Court ruling, Podkuiko said. "The people who have done this know very well how the bureaucracy works. If somebody wants to, it is very easy to slow down the project," he said. According to Podkuiko, the environmental-impact report cited as missing in Gordienko's appeal is one way to slow down the project significantly. Viktor Yevtukhov, a member of the Legislative Assembly's Ring Road initiative group, said the assembly had asked City Hall for money to conduct an ecological evaluation of the project. The initiative group is made up of nine lawmakers whose districts are directly affected by the project. "Nobody is against the project. Lawmakers just want the road to be located away from residential areas," said Oleg Alexeyev, an assistant for Deputy Oleg Sergeyev. City Hall could not be reached for comment on Monday According to Podkuiko, the Ring Road management has allocated about $78 million to relocate about 1,000 families living within the construction zone. Officials at the Transport Ministry say that there is no cause for concern and the project will not be held up. "This road is necessary and it is for the people. I assure you that the eastern half of the Ring Road is going to be completed by May 2003. It may have four lanes instead of eight, but the road will function by 2003," said Arkady Ivanov, head of the federal coordinating council overseeing the project. He added that the ministry has 10 days to appeal the Supreme Court ruling to the Constitutional Court and that it "definitely" will do so.
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