It has already become a hackneyed joke that winter in Russia always comes suddenly: as a rule, an atmospheric front causes a collapse on the streets and roads of cities, and this is repeated from year to year. RG correspondents found out whether workers at utility companies are learning from previous snow catastrophes or whether something is changing in the organization of snow control.
white stripe
On the eve of the first snowfall, the Yekaterinburg traffic police issued an alarming message about the lack of preparation of the regional center’s collection teams for the winter season. Residents shuddered as they recalled the ordeal of the previous snowy winter, when the roads remained dirty for several days.
Fortunately, this time there was no collapse. There wasn’t enough snow to shovel with buckets and take it to the landfill; calm movement along the city streets was only hampered by the rapid formation of ice on the asphalt. Municipal services quickly solved this problem, putting 160 vehicles into service, most of which were used to distribute antifreeze agents. This year, reserve reagents were purchased: more than 6,000 tons of sand and almost 9,000 tons of a special mixture.
The deputy head of Yekaterinburg, Alexey Bubnov, responded simply to the accusation of the State Traffic Inspectorate: he reminded that the winter road season officially begins in the Urals on October 15. That is to say, the first snowfalls were just a preparation before the start of a long and difficult season.
We must pay tribute to the State Traffic Inspectorate for its round-the-clock service on the roads and assistance to drivers.
Yekaterinburg’s road maintenance departments currently have just over 600 cleaning equipment. A large-scale renovation of the park was carried out two years ago, when 80 new combine harvesters were purchased on a leasing basis, the budget will be able to pay for them in five years.
The renewal of the road service park, which is in charge of regional and federal highways, has not been reported for a long time. However, even on the roads, drivers survived the first snowfalls relatively calmly, although there were reports of traffic jams on the roads, for example, in the direction of Kurgan. Even less equipment was used to clean regional roads than in the regional center – one hundred special vehicles, but no major traffic jams were recorded. During the first day of snowfall, ten collisions occurred on the roads of the Sverdlovsk region, all accidents, according to the traffic police, were the fault of the drivers. Many drivers who didn’t have time to change their summer tires to winter tires simply wisely opted to stay home.
But Sverdlovsk taxi drivers did not miss the benefits. The asphalt was not yet covered in dust when travel prices tripled. The cheapest option started at 700 rubles. Well, for the opportunity to quickly get from the center of Yekaterinburg to Koltsovo airport they asked for 1.5 thousand.
source of emotions
With the arrival of a cold front, Chelyabinsk Governor Alexey Teksler warned that excuses about unexpected snowfall would no longer be accepted. “There were warnings from meteorologists in advance, all services were faced with the task of preparing and reacting quickly, so we will check now and draw conclusions,” he wrote on the Telegram channel, reminding his subordinates of their personal responsibility in case of possible emergencies. .
And yet, there were some surprises. In the regional center, at the intersection of Salavat Yulaev and 250th Chelyabinsk streets, a powerful hot water source emerged from under the ground. Due to the rupture of a 500 mm water pipe, jets of boiling water flooded the road and the police had to restrict traffic until the accident was resolved. And evil tongues explained the emergency with the authorities’ desire to warm citizens who were freezing in their houses on the street.
There were also many complaints about snow removal, despite instructions from the authorities to pay special attention to sidewalks and access to patios. The mayor’s office reported that 1,423 janitors and at least a hundred teams were working to eliminate the consequences of Saturday’s bad weather, but their efforts, apparently, were not enough.
But overall, the region survived the first onslaught of winter without serious emergencies. We must pay tribute to the State Traffic Inspectorate for its round-the-clock service on the roads and assistance to drivers. Especially the M5 federal highway in the mining area, the Chelyabinsk bypass and the highway to Kurgan, where many kilometers of traffic jams occurred.
In Chelyabinsk, the prosecutor’s office began to control public transport.
In Chelyabinsk itself, the prosecutor’s office launched an inspection of public transport and promised to evaluate the actions of officials responsible for organizing transport and maintaining roads. The reason was numerous complaints from passengers who had to freeze at stops and storm overcrowded minibuses. The increase in tariffs by 23 percent since October 15 added to the negativity, and the explanations of the regional Ministry of Transport about the need to index the salaries of drivers and update the transport fleet, apparently, only cast more fuel to the fire.
get off the roads
In Tyumen, 270 workers and 197 road vehicles were the first to fight the October snow. A few hours later, the city’s cleanliness tracking system indicated that there were already 362 crews on the line, most working on major overpasses and downtown, where traffic is heaviest.
In a special conference call at the mayor’s office, they recalled that the courtyards are supervised by the management companies: first of all, they must ensure the cleanliness of the entrance areas to apartment buildings, the most popular sidewalks among residents. and access to garbage dumps. . Dangerous icicles on canopies and roofs are also an area of focus for the Criminal Code. However, on Friday, after a day of snowfall, it turned out that not everyone heeded requests to work promptly and responsibly: conversations in the city “heated up” over complaints from residents. These problems in the city are solved, among other things, through the portal “Tyumen is our home”, where you can write an appeal with the exact address where it has not been cleaned, the application will be sent to the quarterly office engineer. inspection, and he will contact the “manager”. At first glance, the chain is long, but the plan has been in the works for years and is giving results.
Coincidentally or not, the acceptance of equipment before winter maintenance of roads in the Tyumen region took place exactly one day before the disaster. By the way, the operational management of the regional Highway Administration is 8.6 thousand kilometers.
– To combat winter slippage, 300 pieces of equipment will be used: combined road machines, graders, tractors and front-end loaders. First of all, according to the plan, we will eliminate the regional highway passing through Tyumen and then in all directions: to the Sverdlovsk, Kurgan, Omsk and Ugra regions,” says Vitaly Posokhov, chief specialist of the Administrative Department.
One of the contractors, DRSU No. 2, has so far prepared 70 vehicles for the snow season and two more are on the way. This is 80 percent of the vehicle fleet; The rest of the equipment is currently used on construction sites, but if winter starts to get worse, it will also be moved to the roads. The road service supervises 220 kilometers of regional roads, as well as 60 kilometers of urban and municipal roads.
– We have already stocked up on pure salt without impurities to restore order on sidewalks and roads with a lot of traffic at temperatures from zero to minus 20 degrees, so as not to stir up dirt. We will leave the sand-salt mixture for roads that are not used so actively by the population. Currently at the base there are 6.5 thousand tons of sodium chloride, enough until the end of winter,” says the company’s deputy director, Andrei Sevryugin.
KDM operator Yuri Myakishev confirms that no means of ice removal has yet been invented that is safer and at the same time more effective than salt.
Meanwhile
The severe cold snap has caused a rush of demand for tire fitting services. According to one of the mobile operators, in Yekaterinburg the number of visits to the websites of specialized companies already in the first half of the snow day increased by 43 percent. RG called three large tire shops and everywhere the answering machine asked the customer not to wait for the operator’s response, but to make an appointment independently through the website. Vacancies appeared there only after a week. However, the prices for these services have not changed much; For example, for four 14-inch wheels they range from 1,680 to 3,000 rubles, depending on the popularity of the car service. As Vadim Girfanov, director of the D3 company, said, in his workshop appointments for tire mounting are scheduled five days in advance, while the prices for the standard wheel modification procedure have increased by only two hundred rubles, and before they had no It has changed for four years.
To shorten queues and not lose profits on such hot days, many car services are building up staff reserves in advance, attracting temporary employees, including students. According to the director of the Rimex student training center, Svetlana Pushpasheva, this year 150 final-year students of the university, future auto mechanics, participated. Depending on the schedule, they can earn from 3 to 11 thousand rubles per shift.
