Don’t be surprised if you see Mayor Yury Luzhkov riding to work in the metro later this month.

City Hall will celebrate World Carfree Day on Sept. 22 by ordering all city bureaucrats to use public transportation, Deputy Mayor Pyotr Biryukov announced Friday. The bureaucrats will be barred from using their official cars and asked to travel by metro, bus or tram on that day.

“Moscow’s bureaucrats must show by their own example how to protect the environment,” Biryukov told Interfax.

He said City Hall would deploy 350 additional public transportation vehicles on that day and ticket prices would be slashed by half to encourage other Moscow residents to follow the lead of the bureaucrats. Metro and bus tickets cost on average 20 rubles (60 cents) per ride.

Moscow, which ranks as Europe’s largest metropolitan area, has atrocious traffic and air quality, despite the fact that its metro ranks as the world’s second busiest, with 2.57 billion rides last year.

Carfree days were first introduced in several European cities in the 1970s. The global day is promoted by the World Carfree Network, a grassroots organization based in Prague. The Sept. 22 date was chosen to coincide with the European Union-sponsored European Mobility Week.