A universal source of experience

Today, a nationwide landscape of climate strategies is taking shape. Simply put, the country is facing the challenge of combating global warming, and many new solutions are being introduced in all of its regions to serve as tools to achieve this goal. Confidence in the effectiveness of the chosen solution needs to be built in advance of widespread implementation, particularly at the federal level. This confidence has to come from somewhere: try out the innovation in a particular area and then scale up the experience. Moscow acts as a carrier of best practice for many instruments to combat climate change. Let us remember three areas in which the metropolitan region successfully acted as a pioneer tester, and later they were adopted by other constituent entities of the Russian Federation.

Organising integrated environmental monitoring systems

Continuous environmental monitoring is indispensable for combating climate change and greening society. The purpose of monitoring is to confirm — transparently and numerically — what and how much is emitted into the air, water and soil, who exactly is responsible for emissions, and whether the environment is actually becoming cleaner, as required by government plans. Environmental monitoring systems allow for this control. Moscow has the most experience of developing such a system in Russia.

The capital’s eco-monitoring system emerged in the early 2000s. In 2001, a specially authorised organisation, Mosecomonitoring, was set up. In 2002, it set up round-the-clock observations of atmospheric air for 26 substances. Initially they were carried out at 11 automatic air pollution control stations, but today there are 59 such stations — it is Europe’s largest urban air observation network.

Photo from: iStock

Since 2004, continuous monitoring of the capital’s soil cover has been carried out at 1,333 sites. In 2006, monitoring of the condition of green areas started — today it is carried out at 155 sites, and groundwater quality is analysed at 305 additional wells, springs and wells.

The same year noise pollution monitoring was organized — today the monitoring network covers more than 2 thousand areas of the city, including 400 residential areas. Landslide monitoring was started in 2007. Initially, it was conducted on the Vorobyovy Mountains and Kolomenskoye, today all areas where hazardous geoprocesses were detected are under control — there are 84 of them in Moscow.

The latest element of the capital’s eco-monitoring system is surface water monitoring. It has been carried out since 2008, when the first automatic water pollution control station in Russia was installed near the Besedinsky bridge on the Moskva River. Today, there is a network of 66 monitoring stations covering not only the Moskva River, but also all of its tributaries, as well as the rivers of the Troitsk and Novomoskovsk administrative districts of the capital.

The results of all observations are publicly available on the Mosekomonitoring portal.

Starting from 2021, the capital’s eco-monitoring is expanding to the Moscow region: a unified system of Moscow and the Moscow region is being formed. 15 automatic air pollution monitoring stations have been introduced in 12 towns near Moscow: two stations each in Vidnoye, Balashikha and Lyubertsy, and one each in Podolsk, Khimki, Dolgoprudny, Odintsovo, Pavlovsky Posad, Dzerzhinsky, Mytishchi and Shchelkovo.

The need to extend the experience gained in Moscow to the rest of Russia was actively discussed in the late 2010s. In January 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed to develop and approve the concept of a federal eco-monitoring system. Its creation has been singled out as a separate federal project “Ecomonitoring” as part of the national project “Ecology”.

In September 2020, there was an environmental incident in Kamchatka. Against this backdrop, even before the approval of the eco-monitoring federal project, it was decided to create a pilot automatic eco-monitoring system in Kamchatka. It has been operating in test mode since July 2021, monitoring radiation background and air pollution levels at several dozens of locations around Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky around the clock. The results of the observations are publicly available through a special portal.

The Ecomonitoring project plans to launch pilot emission monitoring services in major industrial cities by the end of 2022. To date, apart from the Kamchatka Territory, eco-monitoring systems have already been tested in the Rostov Region, Nizhny Novgorod, Dzerzhinsk, Tula, Kaliningrad, Saratov, Kaluga, Veliky Novgorod, Noyabrsk, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area, Komi and Udmurtia.

By 2024, it is planned to create a single information system that will be integrated with other systems of state bodies. It is also assumed that the results of measurements will be broadcast in the public domain. The federal project will be fully implemented by 2030. A public-law company, Russian Environmental Operator, is responsible for it.

 

Photo: Press Service of the Mayor and Government of Moscow

Replacing bus fleets with electric buses

One of the main sources of urban greenhouse gas emissions, as well as health hazards, is fossil fuel-powered transport. Therefore, one of the key measures to reduce the city’s climate and environmental burden is to switch to electric transport.

One of the most modern and efficient forms of urban electric transport is the electric bus. Unlike traditional buses, it travels quietly, does not burn fossil fuels and does not emit any emissions into the atmosphere. However, based on global experience, total operating costs of electric buses are at least 10% lower than those of trolleybuses: service life of electric buses is 15 rather than 12 years; electricity consumption is 18% lower, and infrastructure maintenance costs 17.8% lower.

The first electric buses in Russia were launched in Moscow on 1 September 2018 — on that day, they started running on the trolleybus route No 73 from VDNKh to the 6th district of Bibirev. In 2022, the capital already had more than 1,000 electric buses operating on 79 routes covering all districts of the city.

It is planned that the number of electric buses in Moscow will reach 2,200 in 2024, and by 2030 they will completely replace buses with internal combustion engines.

 

The first Russian region to follow Moscow’s example was St. Petersburg. On 19 March 2019, the first 10 cars took the No. 128 route linking Vasilievsky Island and Petrogradskaya side. For 2022, 150 electric buses served 10 routes in the city on the Neva. St. Petersburg electric buses are charged at night on fleet premises, which does not require special charging infrastructure around the city — unlike in Moscow, which uses rolling stock with fast charging on the line.

In 2021, electric minibuses appeared in Nizhny Novgorod: electric minibuses GAZelle e-NN, created at the Gorky Automobile Plant, began running between Strigino Airport and Park Kultury metro station.

Photo: Press Service of the Mayor and Government of Moscow

In 2022, the government programme for the modernisation of electric transport in Russian cities was launched. It involves the launch of electric buses in the regions, along with the modernisation of tram lines and the purchase of modern trams.

In April, the Russian government approved applications from 10 regions — the program will be implemented in regional centres in Lipetsk, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod, Kursk, Saratov, Sakhalin, Rostov regions, as well as in Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk and Perm regiones. About 300 electric buses will be launched in these regions and about 90 charging stations will be set up for them.

 

The programme runs until 2027 — the five-year implementation period is due to the fact that in addition to the delivery of electric buses, modernisation and expansion of tram lines are also planned. Electric buses are likely to start appearing on the streets of the regions sooner.

In the Rostov region, for example, the first routes are scheduled to open in 2023. The needs of Rostov, as well as Volgodonsk and Taganrog, are estimated at 40 electric buses and 14 charging stations. Four such stations, in particular, are planned to be located outside the cities’ boundaries, along the M-4 Don highway. The test operation of the KAMAZ-6282 electric buses was launched in October 2022. At the same time, new ultra-fast charging stations from the Russian company Sitronics Group are being tested, with full charging time not exceeding 20 minutes.

Photo: Press Service of the Mayor and Government of Moscow

Extension of pedestrian zones

It is now becoming clear that to deal effectively with climate change, cities must be transformed by modern urban solutions. A striking example of such a solution, which also has a positive impact on the quality of life of city dwellers in general, is the extension of pedestrian zones.

This tool alone covers a wide range of urban planning objectives: it contributes to a comfortable and safe urban environment, helps curb the irrepressible flow of vehicles, reduces greenhouse gas and air polluting emissions from cars, improves the health of citizens (not only by reducing pollutants in the air, but also by encouraging people to walk more), and finally supports small business development by increasing sales of retail and catering outlets — because the pedestrian g

Moscow was the first city in Russia to widely and systematically develop pedestrian zones: Arbat was the first fully pedestrianised street in the capital back in the 1990s. And after it, such streets began to appear in 2012, when Kamergersky and Stoleshnikov lanes, Kuznetsky Most and Rozhdestvenka streets received the status of zones for pedestrians.

However, to make a street more attractive and environmentally friendly, it is not necessary to close it completely to motor traffic — narrowing the carriageway and widening and improving the pavements are often enough. The centre of Moscow began to transform in this direction in 2013, when Nikolskaya Street, Novy Arbat, Tverskaya Proyezd, Kadashevskaya Embankment, Bolotnaya Square, and a number of side streets and cul-de-sacs were upgraded.

A year later, the longest pedestrian zone in Europe at that time opened in Moscow — 6.5 kilometres — from Gagarin Square to Kievsky Station Square. Almost half of this area was freed from cars completely, and in other sections the carriageway was significantly narrowed by widening pavements.

In the summer of 2015, the pedestrian initiatives of the Moscow authorities took shape in a separate programme of comprehensive improvement of Moscow streets ‘My Street’. Initially, it was planned until 2018 and implied rearrangement of 37 streets in the centre of Moscow and seven outbound highways (Varshavsky, Kashirsky, Mozhaisky, Shchelkovsky, Leningradsky, Yaroslavsky highway and Ryazansky Prospekt).

Subsequently, the plans for arranging comfortable urban space were expanded — they are continuously implemented to this day, including the “My Street” programme, which has handed over all work on “My District” throughout the capital since 2019. According to the Moscow Mayor’s Office, between 2010 and 2021, the total length of pedestrian zones in Moscow increased 230-fold, from 1.6 kilometres to 369.5 kilometres.

Thanks to the expansion of pedestrian zones over the past decade, Moscow has been transformed, and following the example of the capital, the regions are eager to adopt this tool to improve urban comfort.

Saratov was one of the first to adopt this Moscow experience, where in 2016 they started arranging the Pedestrian Ring. It is noteworthy that the idea for this project came from the city residents.

By the end of the year, Volzhskaya street was rebuilt and became fully pedestrianised. Then Stolypin Avenue, Kirov Square, Rakhova Street and 2nd Sadovaya-Novaya Embankment were reconstructed and closed to cars. The project was completed in December 2021, the total length of the pedestrian route was 8 kilometres, taking the European championship from Moscow.

Over the past three years, pedestrian zones have been actively appearing in dozens of Russian cities. For example, in 2020, three alleys closed to cars began to be built in Lipetsk; in 2021, one of the central streets of Smolensk became pedestrian, in 2022, pedestrian zones were converted or started to be converted in Chelyabinsk, Kursk, Ufa and Astrakhan.

An important pecularity is that in many cases, the initiative for change was taken by city residents, and the transformation of spaces was carried out taking into account their opinions. On the one hand, this confirms the existence in our society of an acute demand for creating a more comfortable environment in the cities, and on the other hand, it clearly demonstrates that at the level of regional administrations the demand is heard, and they intend to meet it.

Author: Ivan Bolotov
Cover photo: nantonov / iStock