November 2, 2006: Moscow stands still in massive traffic jam

[Undertoad]

Apparently, the other day, Moscow suffered an inexplicable six hour traffic jam. This shots are from this page, which Babelfish translates to suggest that nobody knew why things were coming to a standstill. Apparently it was the first day of snow, but that hasn't caused this level of traffic in the past.



I'm thinking one reason is that six lanes of traffic each way stop to merge with each other. I'm betting the number of cars has grown past the city's ability to manage it. This International Herald Tribune story says:

Traffic police blamed the tie-ups on a higher than normal number of accidents on the two ring roads that accommodate much of the city traffic, energy shortages that caused some traffic signals to fail and a large number of foreign delegations.
...
Traffic lights failed near the Garden Ring, the main street that circles central Moscow, and there were 1,700 accidents instead of the usual 1,000, Vasilyeva told the news Web site Gazeta.ru.

1,700 accidents. Instead of the usual 1,000.

The lede of the story is that a soccer team nearly missed an international match, and lost, after being forced to walk and ride the subway to get past the gridlock.




Don't go there. This is not the first time this has happened, as the city suffered an 18 hour jam a few years back.