A Truly Significant Holiday - Passport magazine

Columns
46
Winter in Moscow no longer resembles a scene
from the film Dr. Zhivago, with its images of
heavy, deep white snow and frosty ice-crusted beards.
However, Musvovites still use the winter expression such
as “tomorrow it will be more than 10 degrees,” which
really means less than minus 10, the minus assumed in
winter. But in recent years winter never seems to make
more than a passing appearance with temperatures
hovering near zero.
What snow does come is efficiently removed, with
loaders and trucks working round the clock to clear
streets and walks before dawn. “Guest-workers” are
out early, sweeping, shoveling, scraping and feeding
the scooper-conveyors that fill the trucks.
Each morning Fred gets up to take Fred Jr. to the
bus stop, a round trip that usually takes at least half an
hour, ten there and twenty back, more or less depending
on previous night’s snowfall. In winter the trip starts
in darkness but along the way the streetlights pop off
as daylight seeps in under the city’s ever-present winter
cloud cover. This season weeks go by without sight of
the sun, though finally broken on those crisp, fresh days
when temperatures dip below-15c.
Road hazards increase in winter not only because
of the darkness, snow and ice compounded with the
juveniles of every age behind
the wheel. Pedestrians
also pose seasonal dangers.
One of the marvels visitors
notice about Moscow is that
it is always alive with people,
even late at night in residential
districts. But bundled up
from head to toe, usually in
black or near black they are
difficult to see against the
winter grim on roads, walk-
March 2009
Winter
Hazards
text Fred Flintstone
ways, walls and vehicles. They don’t realize that, just
because they see the headlights of oncoming cars,
drivers do not necessarily see them as the scamper
across the road especially in the dark days of winter.
Against the backdrop of under-light or unlit black, wet
and slippery roads a pedestrian appears, a small bit of
exposed face shining in the headlights of an oncoming
NASCAR wannabe.
Perhaps this is a side-effect of the city’s public transport
system, one of the best with a metro that carries
millions every day and its thousands of buses, trolleybuses
and trams. The superb public transport system
also means that many of its pedestrians have never
been behind the wheel of a car and don’t realize the
limitations of driver sight and reaction.
Many drivers push the traffic rules to their limits, but
pedestrians appear to have no rules, at least you don’t
often see a gaishinik (traffic policeman) stop them for
violations. They cross anywhere often just meters from
a stoplight controlled crosswalk or a podzemny
perekhod (underground walkway). They dart out from
between buses or stand in the middle of the road
waiting to cross the last half with traffic behind and in
front. And like drivers, the problem is not the 98% that
follow the rules, it’s the 2% that make the roads
hazardous for everyone. P