Traffic??!?
by Paul Miazga
A good friend of mine is learning to stay later at the office these days for a number of good reasons, and it’s not just to score brownie points with his boss. He’s doing it because he drives a car to work every day. He figures it’s better to put in a few extra hours of work rather than sit in his car for 2-3 hours trying to negotiate the end-of-the-day rush hour. And even at 9pm most nights it still takes him well more than an hour to do what should be a 20-minute trip. Has it gotten that bad? Just ask anyone driving regularly. It has.
Kyiv drivers have given new meaning to the word gridlock. When I leave the office on Saksahanskoho around 7pm, the cars are bumper-to-bumper five lanes across from Chervonoarmiyska all the way to the Circus, and nearly identical congestion stretches in all directions leading away from the street. It’s almost funny in such cases to see people on these streets hurrying to ‘catch’ a bus that’s been standing in the same spot for roughly 40 minutes. But it’s not funny. That’s a lot of cars – and a lot of moronic drivers, too.
Carpool is a word that will soon enter the lexicon of every Ukrainian within about 3-6 months, give or take. Come hell or high water, Kyiv drivers must learn to park the car and join others in fewer vehicles for the daily commute. A year ago it was unheard of to hear a traffic report on the morning and evening radio stations. Now they’re a fact of life. Carpools will soon be, too.
Not only will carpool enter the lexicon, but so will road rage (if it hasn’t already). Just two weeks ago a frustrated driver about to cross the perennially busy Paton Bridge shot and killed a woman who was jay-walking, forcing him to stop abruptly. He took out a small pistol and shot her numerous times at point-blank range. She died on the way to hospital (how did the ambulance even reach her you ask? Good question). The driver was charged with involuntary manslaughter, a charge that could send him to prison for 15 years.
I was shocked to hear of this incident, but now I’m hearing that this is just a slight escalation from what is going on everywhere in the city: a driver brazenly runs a red light, an accident occurs that fans already short tempers, then fisticuffs start mid-intersection. This same friend who once spent an hour going from Mandarin Plaza to his apartment at the intersection of Gorkoho and Saksahanskoho (about 300m away) has warned me against being an assertive pedestrian. The same week as the pedestrian was shot dead I yelled at a man in an SUV who nearly ran me over – on the sidewalk. I told him in colorful language to watch where he was going. He got out of his vehicle and suggested angrily I tell him that face-to-face. Ridiculous.
President Viktor Yushchenko says the cops aren’t doing a good enough job of policing road traffic in Kyiv and Ukraine in general. But who can be faulted in a system where bribery and corruption are king, roads designed for 250,000 cars must now try to handle three times that number and no one wants to surrender their right to drive their car? And to think I once thought traffic in Cairo and New Delhi was bad!
Holiday season officially arrives
Holiday season in Ukraine officially kicked off last weekend. I kicked it off by snowboarding in the Carpathians, while my fiancée was running about at the IWCK Charity Bazaar on Saturday stocking up on Dutch cheeses and Canadian maple syrup. Precious goods for me – and a sure sign that Christmas is near.
As happy as I was to know these items were secure, it also pleased me to no end hearing that the bazaar this year was expecting to earn more than $150,000 for local charities! Chalk one up for the organizers this year. Mad as ever, the bazaar knows no peers in fund-raising of this magnitude in the country. I don’t think so many Ukrainians realized all the good they’re doing buying scarce or one-of-a-kind items. Meanwhile, we have a horde of grinches over at the Rada fighting over the spoils of government, with nary a penny to spare for such worthwhile endeavors. Ignorance is bliss, but so is the giving season. Big cheers to all those who donated time, money and energy to the IWCK cause! Let’s hope the event does even better next year!
“In Cairo, as elsewhere in the Third World, traffic is perennially bad. What does that say about Kyiv traffic?” (http://halasct.jeeran.com)
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