Heavy traffic jams near Russia's Sheremetyevo Airport are due to a lack of planning skills, a leading transport institute official said Friday.
Repairs began on June 26 on the Leningradskoye Highway, which leads to Moscow's largest international airport. Construction led to severe road congestion in the area, causing pilots as well as travelers to miss their flights.
It was taking Muscovites 5-6 hours on average to get to Sheremetyevo as the highway was narrowed to one lane in each direction, but the situation reportedly improved on Friday, when additional lanes were opened following Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's order to have the situation fixed.
"The reason [for traffic congestion] is in 'zero' planning. Formally we adopt a city development plan until 2025 and think authorities can plan development for 15 years, but today the entire Moscow is looking at us failing to cope with the July-October plan," Mikhail Blinkin, a research advisor for the Transport Scientific and Research Institute, said.
Blinkin said the bridge being repaired now on the Leningradskoye Highway had been in a poor condition 10 years ago and its condition grew even worse 7 years ago.
"A program of preparation work [for repairs] could have well been drafted for seven years," he said, adding that a bypassing route could have been constructed for the period to avoid jams on the way to the airport.
"Are we repairing a bridge for the first time?" he asked.
Aeroflot Deputy CEO Andrei Kalmykov said Thursday that Aeroflot was not warned about the road works. Sheremetyevo head Mikhail Vasilenko accused the Moscow authorities of deliberately jeopardizing trips by passengers who had chosen his airport over the newly remodeled Vnukovo terminals, set to open on July 3.
Vnukovo belongs to the Moscow government, while Sheremetyevo is owned by federal authorities.
Moscow Region Transportation Minister Pyotr Katsyv said that repairs on the Leningradskoye Highway would have begun earlier, but Moscow city and regional authorities could not agree on who should foot the bill.
Katsyv added that the beams supporting the bridge at the center of repairs had been severely worn out. Securing the bridge, he said, was a matter of safety for the Sapsan express train, which travels between Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Andrei Tsybin, head of Moscow's public amenities department, said that the repair should be completed by Oct. 1.
