Construction Of Ring Road In St. Petersburg Hits Snag

Construction of the ambitious $1 billion Ring Road around St. Petersburg could be delayed by a recent Supreme Court decision, project managers and Legislative Assembly lawmakers said on Monday. The court ruled last week that the federal government had broken at least five federal laws, the Land Code and the Federal City Development Code with a decree it issued in March in order to speed up construction of the project. The 154-kilometer Ring Road was begun in 1994 and is intended to reduce the volume of traffic in downtown streets by as much as 50 percent. The project includes a 1.8-kilometer suspension bridge across the Neva River and a flood-control dam in the Gulf of Finland. The Supreme Court ruling came in response to a suit filed this summer by the Izhora Green Movement, a non-governmental organization based in the Frunzensky District, that alleged that the rights of area residents had been infringed by the project management, particularly by a government order this spring authorizing construction to proceed. According to a project document entitled "The Structure of Traffic Flow on the Ring Road," traffic volume on this part of the road will increase by nine times by 2020, reaching an estimated 45,300 vehicles per day, Saint Petersburg Times wrote.