The new bill would put limits on the number of people allowed to demonstrate in the vicinity each of the city’s transportation facilities. These limits would ensure that “no less than half of a thruway can be used for vehicle transport and, when necessary, for citizens not taking part in the rally.” Any application submitted to the mayor’s office to hold a rally without consideration of these limits would be rejected.

The Russian constitution only requires organizers to notify local authorities that they are holding a rally, leading many critics to argue that Moscow’s policy of turning down certain applications is unconstitutional. Nevertheless, unsanctioned rallies are often violently repressed by the police.

The city administration said the bill is an attempt to deal with Moscow’s paralyzing traffic jams, which Mayor Sergei Sobyanin named as one of his top priorities after being appointed last October. But the limits would have no effect on state-sponsored events, limiting only opposition and other independent demonstrations. The city’s traditional St. Patrick’s Day parade, for example, was cancelled this year, ostensibly for the same reason.

According to Eduard Limonov, leader of the Other Russia party and co-organizer of the opposition’s Strategy 31 rally campaign, this is not the first time the government has tried to impose limits on the number of participants in rallies – but it is the first time they’re trying to put it into law.

Former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov has argued that Strategy 31 rallies should not be held in their traditional meeting place – Triumfalnaya Square – out of concern for people’s safety, but at the same time has granted sanction to pro-Kremlin youth groups to rally in larger numbers on the same square.

Limonov said the new bill is connected to the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia and that the Russian authorities are trying to “tighten the screws” out of a fear of public demonstrations.

According to Sarychev, the fact that emergency repairs are often needed for unsafe bridges and roads in Russia “is connected with our poverty.” Even before any new roads are built, he said, routine maintenance of the existing transportation system would require one trillion rubles a year – about $32.2 billion.

“At the very height of development, in 2008, 300 billion ($9.67 billion) was spent on repairs and 270 billion ($8.7 billion) on construction. Automobile owners’ share of this sum is 200 billion ($6.5 billion),” said Sarychev.

The director went on to say that the management system for road repair and construction itself needs to be modernized. As an example, Sarychev noted Leningradsky Highway, which has been suffering daily since June 26 from traffic jams that stretch on for miles at a time due to emergency roadwork. The traffic has been particularly problematic due to the fact that the highway leads to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.

Moreover, the construction of Moscow’s central ring road, or TsKAD, was “mistaken,” said Sarychev, proposing instead that roads be built that stretch from one side of capital to the other to solve the region’s transportation problems. Raising the number of roads in Moscow thrice over and reworking the rules for automobile usage in the city would also be a partial solution to the problem, he said.

The cost of such new roads would approximately fall between $15-55 billion per lane, the same as they cost in Europe and the United States, said the director.

Russia has long suffered from a lack of proper transportation infrastructure and the deterioration of what has already been built. Critics blame the government for failing to use burgeoning oil and natural gas revenues to invest in a modern, country-wide infrastructure. Not a single highway or expressway has been built in Russia over the past two decades, and the smaller roads that have been constructed are very few. China, which is commonly given as a comparison, has laid more than 40,000 thousand miles of high-volume roadways over the same amount of time.

A telling photo essay of the single federal road that leads to the Siberian city of Yakutsk can be viewed by clicking here.