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15 Sep
Moscow Mayor gave an exclusive interview to Komsomolskaya Pravda
During the big conversation, many topics were expected to touch on the pandemic. First, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin spoke in detail about the work of the capital's health care and assured that in the near future there will be no covid restrictions in the capital. Then we discussed other important issues for Mocscow residents.
- Sergei Semenovich, you said that you are trying not to announce unnecessary restrictions, including so that the economy lives and breathes normally. How severe is the pandemic blow for economy?
- Last year we lost a fairly large amount of income. Plus, there were additional costs that we had not planned. The budget difference was about 600 million rubles. Of course, industries such as hospitality, catering, partly retail, tourism and the industries that are associated with it have suffered. Now the city's economy as a whole has reached the level of 2019. On most indicators it even surpassed it. We see this not only by statistics, but also by budget filling. We are starting to catch up with the level that we planned back in 2019, taking into account inflation. This suggests that the urban economy is quite diversified. Even if some industries subside, others compensate for the lost income, and the economy as a whole balance. Although, of course, the most problematic are the hotel industry and catering. But they are gradually reaching the normal level.
- Will the implementation of city programs - renovation and others - be slowed down?
- Even with a budget deficit, we did not stop these programs. Only in May 2020, we stopped construction for just a month. But such construction projects as, for example, healthcare, transport construction were not postponed even for a month. When we began to understand that we had a budget deficit, we continued construction anyway. Because it is an axiom of urban management and economic recovery. You need to invest. If you stop investing in a city, investors stop making investments, then the economy as a whole begins to spiral downward. On the contrary, you should push it forward. Borrow but push forward. Then the economy quickly recovers and returns a hundredfold money. Therefore, renovation, development of the metro, roads, improvement, development of health care, education, culture, sports - we continue all these programs in full measure.
- It is clear that the pandemic cannot be cancelled, it hit all countries and all regions of Russia. But still, let's say the federal budget, after a short period of deficit, is now reaching a surplus. And in Moscow there is a deficit budget. How do you feel about this situation?
- The federal budget is largely formed by revenues from export duties on oil and gas. Therefore, it is affected by the rise in prices for raw materials exports. We do not have such sources. But, nevertheless, as I said, the budget is being restored. Therefore, we have stopped the borrowing program and will not borrow more this year. The next year will already be balanced. Of course, some deficit remains. But, most likely, it will be technical in nature, so everything is fine. We paid off the past debts we got in 2010. Then it was about 300 million rubles, and in today's money - about 600-700 million. We have almost completely paid off this debt. So now the city can borrow if needed.
- It turns out that the Moscow budget can help entrepreneurs affected by the pandemic. The city has already allocated them about 100 million rubles in the form of tax breaks, delay of payments and simply cash assistance. Will this practice continue?
- Business support can be divided into two parts - emergency, related to the pandemic, and planned. Despite some problems with the budget, we have not cancelled and will not cancel the planned one. This is assistance to small business, and grants, and subsidies, and export support, etc. We are in dialogue with business and, if any new support measures are needed, we try to develop them together.
As for emergency support measures due to restrictions, lockdown, we are extending some of these measures. The largest of them continues to operate - subsidies for credit programs, refinancing, new loans. But the most important measure of business support is to enable them to work, to impose minimal restrictions, which is what we are doing.
- Nowadays, industrial zones are actively developing and are turning into fashionable, modern quarters. They build housing, business centres, cultural sites, roads, that is, the entire infrastructure. What will happen to the remaining abandoned industrial zones?
- I probably won't be mistaken if I say that more than half of all housing and facilities that are being commissioned within the Moscow Ring Road are being built on the site of old industrial territories. Largely due to the involvement of economically depressed zones, in 2021 we will reach a record volume of housing construction - about 6 million square meters. There has never been such a volume in the entire history of either Soviet or post-Soviet Moscow. But, in fact, we removed only the upper layer, where the owners or investors themselves were able to accumulate territories and build a competent investment policy. We have a huge number of industrial zones that are still in a depressed state. Inside them there are many small owners who are generally unable to do anything there, and this is a sad sight. Therefore, such industrial zones require a special approach.
On the instructions of President Vladimir Putin and on the initiative of the Russian government, a law on the integrated development of territories was adopted. In fact, it is a law on renovation, but only concerning industrial zones. It allows the city authorities to seize these lands at the cadastral value, form urban planning documentation and put up for auctions or independently develop these territories. We already have several such pilot projects, contracts for implementation have been concluded. There is decent money and volumes, but this is just the beginning.
Today, there are about 130 industrial areas in operation with a total area of about 2000 hectares. This is a huge volume for our city. If translated into money, then this is the attraction of 7 trillion rubles of investment, the creation of about half a million work places, tens of millions of square meters of housing. In place of ruined territories, where it is not clear who is doing what, it is possible to create compact, good complex areas - both jobs and housing for Moscow residents. This will largely transform the city, renew it and give an impetus to development.
- Once there was a joke that Moscow is not rubber. On this topic, no one jokes, and everyone implies that it is rubber. How many people actually live in Moscow now? And is there any limit to how many people will be in the city in 10-20-30 years?
- At all times, all governments have tried to limit the number of residents of the capital. This was under Stalin, and under Brezhnev, and under Khrushchev, and in the post-Soviet period. But at no time has anyone succeeded in doing this. Moscow is growing, whether we want it or not, every 10 years by an average of a million people. It seems that this is a large increase, but the number of our inhabitants is also large. And this growth is not all migratory. In recent years, most of them have been natural growth, Moscow residents who are born in Moscow, our younger generation. In the capital, the death rate is lower and the birth rate is higher.
And if you look at the specific increase in migration, then Moscow is not in the first place. The leaders are Krasnodar Territory, Tyumen, and a number of other cities. Moscow is in 4th place in terms of such an increase. But, of course, in absolute terms, this is a large volume. Today the population of Moscow is 12.5 million people and about 8 million residents of the Moscow region.
- Still, about migrants. In the pandemic, many of them left Moscow. Now there is clearly a shortage at construction sites, and in the urban economy, and in other areas. How are you going to make up for this loss? And after that the question. Outflow is outflow, but recently there have been several high-profile violations among migrants. How do you deal with this?
- As for hooliganism, violation of migration laws, there is only one recipe - to punish, expel from the country and prohibit entry. What, in fact, is happening. As soon as we felt the tension of this situation, we immediately began to take tough measures to arrest, initiate criminal cases, expulsion, ban on entry, etc. We will continue this practice. Please come and work, but there is no need to disturb public order.
As for the lack of labour. Formally, there are restrictions on entry from the CIS countries to Russia, but by the number of patents we see that there are about the same number as in 2019 - about 430 thousand. The deficit arises, most likely, not because there are much fewer migrants, but because we already have more construction projects. In previous years, the average housing commissioned was about 3 million square meters. In the last two years we have introduced more than 5 million square meters, and now we are approaching 6. That is, the volume of housing has doubled. Accordingly, there are more construction projects, and more labour is required. This problem, of course, is also connected with the fact that our population structure is aging and the percentage of employees is not increasing, but, most likely, is decreasing.
It is necessary to attract people from other regions, to increase wages and labour productivity. What, in fact, are all companies doing. In the communal sector, for example, in the State Budgetary Institution “Automobile Roads”, there are no migrants at all. We accept citizens from other regions of the country, from neighbouring regions. There are more migrants in our state budgetary institutions connected with the operation of houses, yards and so on. There are lower wages, maybe more difficult work. But here, too, work places are provided to Russians at the earliest opportunity.
- This year marks the fifth anniversary of the project of the Moscow Central Circle (MCC). Do you remember how this idea came to mind? Are you satisfied with the implementation?
- This idea existed for a long time, at the beginning of the last century. At one time they even tried to organize some kind of movement in separate areas. Everything turned out to be unused. This railway operated as a freight ring. In 2011, we began to discuss the MCC project with the President of Russian Railways Yakunin Vladimir Ivanovich. Few people believed that passenger traffic would be realized. The departments said: "If you give money, then we will give, but you will never give." We immediately invested three and a half million rubles in the authorized capital of the joint venture in advance. The railroad workers had no variants, they invested their three and a half. And the wheel spun, design and construction began. In fact, in parallel to the existing ring, another ring for passenger traffic was built, the entire infrastructure, all overpasses, bridges, tunnels were rebuilt. A gigantic job. When we were building, all experts said that there would be a maximum of 250 thousand passengers in the future. And two years later there were half a million a day! We started to run trains at intervals of 7-8 minutes, then - 5 minutes, now - 4 minutes. And we are already thinking about launching double-decker trains at the MCC, because the existing trains cannot cope. The ring connected many districts of Moscow and relieved stress from the radial and head sections of the metro and suburban railways.
- We have a domestic critic in our editorial office who called this road the most senseless construction site in Moscow
- And not only your domestic critic. We had our own home critics who said that this was a pointless idea. But I believed. I understood that this was strategically correct.
Of course, a lot depended on what kind of transfers would be organized from the radial directions of the metro and railways. We opened them gradually, but now all connections are made, all stations are equipped. Therefore, the MCC is filled up every year. After the completion of the construction of the Large Circle Line (LCL), the passenger flow will probably be redistributed. LCL will take over, I think, 700-800 thousand passengers in the future. Among them there will be a huge number of people who are forced to go to the centre today, then return in other radial directions, oncoming links, etc.
In fact, the two rings are located in such a way that the MCC is on top, to the north, and the LCL is below.
If you draw it symbolically, then they will look like this (the mayor showed everyone a piece of paper on which the picture really folded into a familiar symbol). These two hearts of Moscow are real, figuratively and literally. The two hearts of the entire transport system of Moscow, which will stabilize for many, many years, will lay the foundation for the normal operation of both railway transport and the metro.
- What LCL stations are you planning to open this year?
- MCC partially relieved the load on the existing ring line. And the Large Circle Line will still relieve the load and will make the situation normal. This year we will launch ten stations at the LCL. The same number is already working there. Thus, two thirds of the ring will carry passengers. Next year, I hope, we will also open the remaining 10 stations. Maybe some of the work will go away at the beginning of 2023, but the project is already at a high stage of implementation. This year we will launch the western, south-western and southern sections of the ring.
- Moscow residents are already accustomed to MCD-1 and MCD-2. When will we be able to ride the third and fourth diameters?
- Both routes are planned to be launched in 2023-2024. MCD-3 is a very complex project. It became even more complicated when the decision was made to build a high-speed highway Moscow - St. Petersburg. MCD-3 runs from Zelenograd - this is the Leningrad branch. We must synchronize the construction of the high-speed rail line and the third diameter, because it is impossible to build them separately. Otherwise, everything will have to be rebuilt later. The course of the high-speed rail itself is the most difficult part of the entire high-speed road. There are a huge number of overpasses, bridges, road crossings and so on. And all this must be combined. My colleagues and I are constantly holding meetings, construction is underway. Hopefully, MCD-3 will start working in 2023.
- Will the high-speed railroad reach the Leningradsky railway station?
- It will come. Another high-speed rail station will be built next to the Leningradsky railway station. It will appear next to the MCD-2 and MCD-4 branches. Now there is Kalanchevskaya station, small, none, just a platform. Today we have already opened a large platform for MCD-2 there. In a year and a half we will build MCD-4. The result will be a huge transport hub, where two diameters and high-speed lines will intersect.
The railways of Moscow and the Moscow region were mainly focused on long-distance trains. At the same time, it was believed that commuter travel is a secondary task for the railway, such an encumbrance. We, in fact, broke this paradigm in Moscow and the Moscow region, in general, in the Central Transport Hub. They reported to the president, discussed it with the government and began to build a new system of railway transportation in the agglomeration.
We began to lay new main railway lines parallel to the existing ones, to connect them with each other so that they form diameters and not dead-end radii. We are updating the rolling stock, increasing the frequency of trains, reducing tariffs and synchronizing them with the metro, making it possible to transfer to the metro. We are building new stations, in fact, train stations, and not platforms that were before. In general, they already look completely different, and the volume of possible transplants there is completely different. When the project of the Moscow Central Diameters is fully implemented, we will be able to say with confidence that the railways of our metropolis will be the best in the world in terms of their integration and adaptability for the daily transportation of the citizens themselves.
It's a huge, hard job. Today, the reconstruction of the tracks from Kalanchevka to the Kursk railway station is underway on the square of Three railway stations. There, in parallel, another railway is being built with three road and three railway overpasses, 6 bridges, new platforms, and a new station. And all this on a small stretch, in a busy place in Moscow, without stopping trains. The MCD-4 under construction is a new railway line to Aprelevka in the Kiev direction, a connection with the Gorky direction. These are very complex, difficult projects, but the first projects of MCC, MCD-1, MCD-2 provide transportation of a million people per day. When two more MDCs are launched, one million more people will be added. This is a huge system.
- What does this system give?
- Residents of the Moscow region can get to the capital at a normal rate, comfortably change to other types of transport - metro or other public transport. In fact, you can get there with the convenience of an overground metro. This unloads both the existing metro and the roads that lead to Moscow, and creates a unified transport system for Moscow and the Moscow region.
- What new types of transport can appear in Moscow? Maybe water buses?
- Hydrogen? There will be no more transport from this. This is a question of ecology and economics. Electric buses provide the greatest environmental impact. With the help of an order from Moscow, we created an electric bus industry in Russia. Today, two factories, GAZ and KamAZ, produce world-class electric buses. Moreover, KamAZ and I have opened an assembly plant in Moscow for the production of electric buses. Great car. And there were a huge number of sceptics who said that we have a cold city, that this is all nonsense, and so on. We are actively approaching a thousand electric buses. They have gone through more than one winter and have shown themselves well. Each year, the efficiency of the batteries increases, the operating time increases, and the cost price decreases. We see that this is a promising story. We stopped buying diesel buses. Now we buy only electric buses. Moscow is one of the first cities in the world that made this decision in order to set an example for commercial transport, and generally improve the environment, and create an environmental direction in transport in the city and in the country.
As for hydrogen engines, God forbid, if they ever appear. It will be great. While there are experiments going on, we are participating in them. This year the hydrogen bus will be ready for running-in, trial and so on. There is, of course, a lot of work for an industrial mass design.
- Soon we will see river trams in Moscow. But we have a northern city, most of the time it is cold. Will water transport be in demand? Do we really need it?
- You know, winters are getting warmer. The Moskva River is open almost all winter. Even commercial, sightseeing river steamships run almost all year round.
We buy electric water trams with good modern design. On the one hand, they have such an image tourist character. But, of course, they will also help in regular passenger transportation. For now, we will buy twenty for the experiment next year. Let's see how they work. From the point of view of navigation, their hulls are reinforced. Two to three centimetres of ice can pass by itself. Plus, a small icebreaker will run along the river, which, depending on the situation, will be able to break the ice and enable river trams to operate all year round and without interruption.
Source: kp.ru
