Detour #115: Moscow Mayhem, Russia
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With its crazy traffic and even crazier drivers attempting to cross Moscow in a day proves too much for Luke Ponsford.
At 8am on this particular morning, there were many places in the world I would rather have been. But here I was, on the southern tip of Moscow in the stationary traffic of the city’s MKAD outer ring road. It couldn’t have been any greyer, and the rain was coming down in unrelenting sheets. Ten lanes of gridlock in both directions were garnished on either side by colossal Stalinist apartment blocks and squat, mirror-finished office buildings, which reflected this miserable scene back to me. My brightly hued transport for the day, a cardinal red Volvo XC60, provided the only dash of colour as far as the eye could see. My reason for being here? To see how quickly it would take for me to get from one side of Moscow to the other.
Two hours later and the word ‘quickly’ was out the window. The weather had improved a tad, but the traffic hadn't. My progress had been practically non-existent. Maybe I’d gone a couple of hundred yards. Maybe. This was going to be a very long day. Luckily, before I was forced to get out and walk, orphaning the Volvo in the middle lane, the traffic started moving, albeit at turtle-like pace. Eventually I was able to turn off the MKAD and onto Leninsky Prospekt, heading northwards towards central Moscow. The thick, leaden soup of congestion began to ease as I approached the grand Garden Ring Road – the Sadovoye Koltso – that circled the city centre. My mood brightened a bit. That wouldn’t last.
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The weight of traffic might have subsided, but that didn't mean that my progress was any more relaxing. Piloting a vehicle here required nerves of pressed steel. In normal city traffic – at least in my experience – drivers could be aggressive, but there was never much of an opportunity to go fast enough to get into any real trouble. In Moscow, however, things were a little different. Once the deluge had cleared, it was all about maximum velocity. And if the speeding traffic could talk, it would probably speak in hushed tones of the city's peculiar social hierarchies. On these chaotic, traffic-clogged boulevards, some vehicles appeared to be decidedly more equal than others. Waiting for a light to turn green on the huge Taganskaya Square, I noticed in my rear view mirror a rapidly approaching large 4x4 in standard Moscow spec – raven black with opaque windows and a roof festooned with mysterious antennae. It proceeded to mount the pavement, drive at high speed straight through the red light and take off down the adjacent street, tyres squealing. Many of these foreboding SUVs, I was reliably informed, belonged to government agencies and those who were “close” to government agencies. So far, so Jason Bourne.
In desperate need of a break, I turned off into the high-end shopping district of Kitay-Gorod just in time for some pre-lunch unpleasantness, Moscow-style. After pulling over for a moment to stretch my legs on the ultra-luxurious Tretyakovsky Proezd, a brace of gorilla-sized security guards, clearly unimpressed with me taking snapshots of all the fancy boutiques, approached and threatened to break my camera. I hastily got back in the car, accelerated away and made for the nearby Bolshoi restaurant, just a stones’ throw from the famous theatre of the same name. Maybe I’d be able to have some lunch without being killed by industrial-strength congestion fumes, shady government agencies or ex-members of the Spetsnaz.
But nothing seemed to be easy in this town. Finding somewhere to put the Volvo for more than a few seconds was proving to be an onerous task. Moscow had no parking regulations. No meters, no pay-and-display, no single or double lines. Nothing. Unsurprisingly, the streets around my lunch stop were pure chaos. I saw a number of large murdered-out luxury saloons double-parked in the middle of the street in front of the Bolshoi, attended to by burly minders wearing Secret Service-style earpieces, shoulder-holsters bulging under their tight, ill-fitting suits. Across the street there was a filthy, battle-scarred Bugatti Veyron parked with two wheels on the kerb, treated with about as much respect as a Mondeo left for dead on a sink estate. Other cars were left with their noses or tails jutting out into the road, obstructing the traffic and making all the furious drivers even more furious. As I had neither a security detail nor any desire to abandon my borrowed wheels, I feverishly drove round the block half a dozen times until I spied a knackered Yugo pulling out of a dead-end alleyway. With no other choice, I drove in, parked up and hoped for the best.
Lunch could have been better. Worrying about the possible fate of my Volvo – apparently cowboy operators could simply tow your car away from the areas they independently “policed”, and you’d never see it again – rather soured my borscht. Being relentlessly stared down by a bulldog-faced oligarch, surrounded by a retinue of giggling, scantily clad young prostitutes, wasn’t helping my digestion much either.
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A most uncomfortable ninety minutes later and I found myself back in the car. It was, miraculously, still there when I returned. It was now 3pm and the traffic was getting heavy again. As I approached the Lotte Plaza, a luxury shopping mall on the corner of the Garden Ring, everything ground to a standstill. It looked like another three-hour jam was in the offing, and Moscow wasn’t about to let me down. By the time I eventually reached the glittering towers of the business district I was close to tears. It was past 6pm. The journey had been an absolute nightmare. I really needed to pee. Next time – although hopefully there wouldn’t be a next time – I'd follow the advice of my Moscow ‘fixer’ Pavel: “If you want to cross Moscow in a hurry,” he chided me, “find an ambulance driver and give him €150. He'll take you. It’ll take half an hour.” Wise words. But it might have been better if he’d told me that at 8am.
Words Luke Ponsford
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