Despite the efforts of the local government, Muscovites' travel times by car are escalating at an alarming rate as more and more automobiles pour into the capital, Izvestia reported Friday.
Travel times on a stretch of road that would take 30 minutes to traverse without traffic rose 2 minutes between 2011 and 2012 — from 51 minutes to 53 minutes, a study by online traffic tracker Yandex.Probki found.
Over a period of two years, the study measured travel times between the Garden Ring and the MKAD in five directions at two peak times: traveling towards the city center between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. and leaving the center between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m.
The worst overall increase was in the morning on Kutuzovsky Prospekt/Mozhayskoye Shosse, where commute times rose by almost 70 percent in two years, from 29 minutes to 49 minutes.
Evening commutes increased the most on Leningradka, where travel times increased by 68 percent, from 25 minutes to 42 minutes.
When he was appointed acting mayor in 2010, Sergei Sobyanin declared solving the transportation problem to be one of the main goals of his administration.
Experts say the problem shows no sign of improvement because the increase in the number of automobiles outpaces the rate at which new roads are being built.
There are 386,000 more cars in the capital than there were in 2012, according to market research agency Avtostat.