What was the Moscow Ring Road more than half a century ago: Doubtful records, theft of 10 cm of the road and other little-known facts

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The predecessor of the Moscow Ring Road played one of the main roles in the December counteroffensive in 1941, and the road itself in the first period of its existence was an empty and calm country highway, which could easily be used both for filming a film and for family photos. Decades later, the words "Beware of the car" and "MKAD" were related in a different way, and one of the dubious road records was the huge death rate among drivers and pedestrians.

Rocky road

In 1937, when the Stalinist reconstruction of Moscow was in full swing, plans appeared for a ring road. Two years later, the future track was already fixed on the ground. It was necessary to swing at a grandiose project, several tens of kilometers of highway with interchanges - this is in a country where the overwhelming majority of roads remained unpaved. The Moscow ring road could have appeared in the first half of the 20th century, but this did not happen - the Great Patriotic War began.

Already in the summer of 1941, however, active construction of roads began around Moscow - those were rocky routes, that is, used for the transfer of troops and equipment in order to meet the needs of the front. This ring road, built in just a month, became, in a sense, a prototype of the future Moscow Ring Road, however, the trajectories of these two routes did not coincide. Rokada was a broken ring, it connected the already existing roads and entrances to the city; in addition, floating bridges were built across the Moskva River. The length of the bypass road exceeded 125 kilometers.

More than ten years passed after the war, the reconstruction of Moscow was resumed, and with it the development of the project of the ring road. The current route of the Moscow Ring Road was outlined in 1956. The first section of the future ring was the section near the Yaroslavl highway.

The construction of the ring road was headed by Alexander Kubasov, an engineer who, during the war years, also designed the rockade road. Among his other achievements were the restructuring of Soviet roads from horse-drawn to asphalt and cement-concrete, as well as the construction of the Novograd-Volynsky - Rovno - Dubno - Lvov highway.

By November 22, 1960, 48 kilometers of the Moscow Ring Road from Yaroslavl to Simferopol Highways were built and opened to traffic. And completely, in the form of a ring, the road appeared before motorists by November 1962.

Country Highway

This ring was completely different from the current road. The highway consisted of two lanes in each direction, there were no markings, central lighting, and there was no flow of cars as such. The new track was used for filming scenes of the film "Beware of the Car", for work it was not even necessary to block the track - there was no such need.

It was a "suburban highway", along which the border of Moscow has been drawn since the opening of the Moscow Ring Road - with the appearance of a new road, the territory of the capital has expanded. The new, enlarged territory was named "Big Moscow". The Moscow Ring Road served as the city border until 1984.

The roadways were separated by a four-meter "green" strip, it was covered with grass and bounded by high curbs. The shoulders were embossed so that the sleeping driver could feel in time that he was pulling off the road. The MKAD included 7 bridges and 54 overpasses at junctions, which opened a new page in Soviet road construction. In the eighties, the first three-level interchange was built - at the intersection of the Moscow Ring Road and the Simferopol highway.

The banks of the Moscow River were connected by two bridges that became part of the ring road - Besedinsky and Spassky. The history of Spassky goes back to the first half of the 16th century, when a wooden bridge was built on this site near the village of Spas-Tushino. And the one along which the movement of cars is still carried out was built in 1962, however, to ensure the required number of lanes next to this bridge, a second was built at the end of the last century.

By the end of the eighties, the width of the carriageway - 7 meters for each side - ceased to cope with the increased flow of cars, in the nineties the reconstruction of the Moscow Ring Road became a paramount task. Unfortunately, the first steps taken in this direction made this highway a “death road”.

The new look of the Moscow Ring Road

The beginning of the expansion of the Moscow Ring Road was the elimination of the green dividing strip - this gave an additional four meters to expand the existing lanes and organize a wide shoulder. But the lack of fencing between oncoming traffic has led to a sharp increase in the number of fatal accidents on the road. More than two hundred people per year died on the Moscow Ring Road, and the number of pedestrian and head-on collisions increased dramatically.

By this time, the throughput of the highway finally ceased to meet the needs of the capital and the region - even in the absence of congestion, the flow rate did not exceed forty kilometers per hour. Reconstruction of the main road in Moscow has become an urgent need.

Extending 109 kilometers of the Moscow Ring Road, building new interchanges, and bringing the road in line with international safety standards has become a colossal and extremely expensive task. During the reconstruction of the ring, abuses and thefts were revealed, criminal cases were opened. There was a legend, however, unconfirmed, that 10 centimeters of the roadside were "stolen" in both directions of the road.

Another curious fact was the installation of kilometer pillars - the distance between them, as shown by later measurements, ranged from 700 meters to 1800 meters. The revealed negligence was not eliminated - the activities of road services were already tied to the layout of the pillars, they decided to keep the usual order. the road began in 1994. It included the installation of barriers between opposite directions of traffic and full coverage of the ring.

And the second stage, which lasted from 1995 to 1999, meant the expansion of the roadway up to 50 meters. Five lanes were now provided for each direction. For the renovated road, the level of traffic safety has significantly increased, and in addition, noise protection shields and a fairly simple eco-product - a tunnel for animal migration in the Losiny Island region - have been created.

The next stage in the reconstruction of the Moscow Ring Road was the renewal of outdated junctions and ramps, and in addition, two four-level junctions were built - at the intersection of the ring road with Yaroslavskoye and Novorizhskoye highways.

At present, the capacity of the Moscow Ring Road is nine thousand vehicles per hour - and this is no longer enough. The reason for this is the increased traffic flow due to the movement from one part of the Moscow region to another, and in addition, a large number of shopping and entertainment facilities have been built right on the Moscow Ring Road over the past decades, which greatly increased the load on the road.

Record congestions on the Moscow Ring Road can lead to hours-long traffic jams - this often happens during snowfalls. And the longest traffic jam was recorded on May 15, 2008 - its length was 68 kilometers, that is, more than half of the entire length of the route.

And Soviet cinema immortalized on film not only Moscow roads, but also famous cars: here's what else remains behind the scenes of the film "Beware of the car".