The hunt for the "stag-headed": after the quarantine in Moscow only 11 of 88 trolleybus routes remained

On the contrary, under the guise of combating COVID-19, they forced a "trolleybus demolition".

Sergey Mizerkin

Now in Moscow closed on 74 trolleybus routes; On June 19, the number of “killed” trolleybus lines will increase to 77. Now Liksutov’s subordinates are figuring out how to shift the responsibility for the upcoming dismantling of the trolleybus network ...to the Energy Service of Mosgortrans.

From the beginning of February until mid-June of this year, as many as 23 trolleybus routes stopped working in Moscow. Diesel buses are replacing eco-friendly and economical trolleybuses. Thus, officials ahead of schedule exceeded their plan to close the trolleybus traffic in the capital. Initially, it was planned to close only 16 routes for the indicated period, Novye Izvestia wrote.

However, COVID-19 and the subsequent restrictions on the rights and freedoms of Muscovites unleashed Liksutov’s department: the routes are closed in “bundles”, even without regard to the upcoming vote on amendments to the Constitution. In one fell swoop, 6 trolleybus lines were eliminated. Trolleybuses No. 21, 27, 61, 74, 77, 82 last entered the line on a rainy evening on May 31. As of June 17, out of 88 previously operating trolleybus routes, only 14 were operating, 6 of 9 trolleybus parks were closed (two of them serve electric buses).

May 9 was the last day of the 5th trolleybus fleet. On the 18th, trolleybuses Nos. 8 and 57 will go down in history, and the next day, the “thirty”, regularly transporting Muscovites and guests of the capital for more than six decades.

“It's just some kind of madness! The Moscow City Hall, in my opinion, has a trolleybus psychosis! Symptoms of the disease are expressed in a crazy, irresistible desire to destroy the trolley to the ground! Just wipe it off the face of the earth! There is no treatment yet”, Mark Velichko does not hide his emotions in his commentary on the Muscovites for the Trolleybus (MZT) website.

Transport bloggers also note that all of the remaining articulated trolleybuses in Moscow no longer go on line. “The motivation for this decision is incomprehensible, especially during the period of the epidemic, because more capacious rolling stock allows for a greater social distance”.

However, even with a clear deterioration in transport services due to the liquidation of the trolleybus, the “analysts” from the city hall decided to make a public statement: they extended the 82 trolleybus substitute bus for a whole stop - to the Tverskaya Zastava. At the same time, a new contact network sagged idle for two years - the wires were installed as part of the reconstruction of the Belorussky railway station area, but the trolleybuses did not start.

Georgy Krasnikov, an assistant to the Moscow City Duma deputy, analyzed in his blog where magically the "extra" buses are taken from Mosgortrans to replace trolleybuses. He analyzed the schedule of the movement of Maxim Liksutov’s pride - the Magistral transport system, City Projects quoted.

You can paint for a long time, painfully biting the capital's Deptrans. For those who have forgotten: “Trunk” was launched as an alternative to the metro, promising that the interval between buses of the main lines would not exceed 5 minutes. A kind of underground metro. Guess what happened 4 years after the opening of the Magistral?

According to Krasnikov, the project failed miserably - not one of the M bus routes meets the stated criteria. For example, the M1 route - an interval of 9-15 minutes on weekdays (10-12 minutes on weekends), but on the M5 route, buses follow in 26 - 29 minutes!

"What, well, there’s really not a single straight route in the Magistral with the declared 5-minute intervals? So that it would be like a subway?”, - the activist asks. "There is surprisingly! This is the M4 route. And ...the drum roll ...it's a trolleybus!"

Indeed, the interval between the M4 trolleybuses is 4 minutes! Also, a trolleybus No. 4 runs every five minutes along the line on Leninsky Prospekt. So, the interval between the machines is 2-2.5 minutes! So much for the trolleybus subway. How so? After all, in his “scientific” explanations, Department of transoprt, for a year, says that “the contact network is out of date, that it is impossible to increase the number of rolling stock”? But a year ago, along Leninsky interspersed with the "horned" M4 and 4 and the trolley bus number 7 went. And nothing, the "outdated" wires and traction substations coped with the intensive trolleybus traffic.

But, according to public figures, the release on the former trolleybus routes of Filevsky bus and trolleybus fleet fell in some supernatural way (now the trolleybus department serves electric buses). So, according to the data of trolleybuses, from June 3 there was a “collapse of flights” with “trolleybuses”: T54 buses - from 209 flights to 183, and T66 almost half: from 101 to 62 flights, similarly - with an ex-trolleybus T-34.

Without flinching, on the eve of the Great Victory, Moscow lost the Blue Trolleybus - in the salon of the Iron Cuckold, the bards sang songs. And the People's Artist of the USSR Vasily Lanovoy supervised the “musical excursion” project. They say he went to ask for help to Sergei Semenovich Sobyanin himself! Activists claim that the trolleybus with the garage number 5838 in a barbaric manner "was repainted by roller in the brand book of Moscow transport and transferred to Balakovo".

The 5th trolleybus fleet, which is on Krasnaya Presnya, is “no less sad” - it is “temporarily” converted into a bus fleet.

Residents of the surrounding houses can only sympathize. Three houses on Khodynskaya Street and Street in 1905, according to the defenders of trolley buses, are located closer than 50 meters to the newly-built fleet, which is prohibited Fire Safety Requirements FSR-111-98 and Code of Practice (SP) 42.13330.2011. At the moment, the construction of a hotel complex is also underway on the 1st Land Lane, adjacent directly to the territory of the 5th park. The developer and future guests will undoubtedly be "delighted" with such a neighborhood.

However, even if once the trolleybus depot starts to operate the electric buses, the “temporary” gas station will still need to be left - in the autumn-winter period, the electric buses are refueled ...with fuel - the interior of the electric buses is heated by a diesel heater without additional cleaning filters.

At the same time, the trollpark cannot service buses, because the trolleybus workshops are not equipped with a special exhaust hood for exhaust gases and diagnostic and test stands for servicing and repairing buses.

In Deptrans, on the contrary, they believe that the Khodynskaya platform - the 5th park is now called - is quite suitable for servicing buses. According to the text of the official response of Mr. Liksutov, Mr. Pronin, No. 17-80-673 / 20 dated June 1, 2020, posted on the Muscovites for a Trolleybus website, currently a container for 20 cubic meters of motor fuel is installed on the territory of the trolleybus depot “at least 40 meters from residential and public buildings”, and that the gas station complies with the Technical Regulations on Fire Safety Requirements of 2008, as well as the current sanitary standards. At the end of the letter, Dmitry Pronin is encouraging: the transfer of bus routes of the Tsentralny branch (including the 1st, 5th and Filevsky trolleybus parks) to service with electric buses "is planned to be completed in 2022". However, the price of such promises is leveled by their failure to fulfill. Well, Sobyanin promised on TV not to eliminate the trolleybus...

Yes, and with the declared transition from buses and trolleybuses to electric buses at the capital's transport complex, I strained: trolleybuses can calmly work until the planned replacement with electric buses, as it was when the first diesel-electric buses were launched at VDNKh - the 6th trolleybus fleet let out for routes and trolleybuses, and electric buses, until, with the delivery of new rolling stock, has completely switched to battery transport. However, in the response of Moscow transport workers the reason for the retirement of trolley buses is trivial - “physical wear”, which, however, does not prevent “obsolete” electric cars from going to other cities where they continue to be successfully operated. According to various sources, Moscow presented dozens of regional tram and trolleybus departments with about 300 of their trolleybuses. And not going to stop. Even the queue was formed behind a free Moscow electric transport.

Explain to Muscovites why the modern low-floor trolleybuses “BKM” or “Trolza” produced in 2012 with autonomous running, like the repair of trolleybuses a few years ago, are worse than diesel buses, experts of Liksutov do not consider it necessary. “In Moscow, there are more than 1300 LiAZ buses in 2011 with the release of the Euro-4 ecological class, which have almost reached a 10-year period. Formally, they are prohibited from operation. There are still 100 pieces of Euro-3 buses that have not yet been replaced, despite the huge supply of buses. But after all, the mayor’s primary task is to eliminate the trolleybus, ”the Ministry of Transport noted. - I wonder how they will “write off” the new 46 trolleybuses collected in 2017 at the Moscow Sokolniki railway-car repair and construction plant (SVARZ)?

And yet on Tverskaya, 13 they understand: sooner or later they will have to answer. After the final plan for the liquidation of the Moscow trolleybus was published in the media, the vice-mayor of Moscow, Maxim Liksutov, reassured Muscovites: “There is no specific date for the cancellation of the last trolleybus”.

The mouthpiece of Moscow propaganda - “Evening Moscow” - in April even published a lulling vigilance article “It is too early to write off Moscow trolleybuses from the accounts”.

The publication cites the words of the head of the capital's Deptrans that "there is no information about when the contact network will be removed." Stop, from this place in more detail. Maxim Stanislavovich somehow “early reset” the current Protocol of the meeting of the Department of Transport dated September 16, 2019 No. 61-07-759 / 9 on the elimination of the trolleybus and the dismantling of the contact network by September 2020. There are documents and fresher - moreover, Deputy Sobyanin signed these documents with his own hand.

So, in accordance with the order of M.S. Liksutova dated March 17, 2020 No. 17-35-3048 / 20, the Energy Service of Mosgortrans (quote a fax message) “it is necessary to organize the preparation of documentation for the dismantling and further decommissioning of the facilities of the State Unitary Enterprise Mosgortrans. Dismantling is connected with a large-scale improvement program with a total estimate of 350 billion. The concept of a garden city, unlike a diesel bus, does not include environmentally friendly and charismatic trolleybus transport.

The officials were not even embarrassed by the fact that the trolleybus infrastructure was completely modernized, in particular, during the expansion of the Enthusiasts highway or Andropov Avenue, where aesthetes from Deptrans demanded to remove the so-called inter-jumper wires - wires connecting different directions of the trolleybus lines. So that the wires do not "cover the sky", crossing the street, they were removed to specially laid collectors, which is very, very expensive.

A list of streets where it is planned to remove the contact suspension has been posted on the Muscovites for a Trolleybus website: in addition to the indicated repaired avenues, Simonovsky Val, Velozavodskaya, Lipetskaya, Bakinskaya Streets, Krasnaya Presnya Street, as well as Leninsky Prospekt and other addresses are listed.

Mosgortrans energy engineering engineers need to prepare Inspection Acts and Technical Conclusions for the dismantling of the trolleybus infrastructure. The most interesting thing - in fact, in these same “acts” and “technical conclusions”, the heads of the Energy Management Service should take responsibility for writing off an absolutely unamortized contact and cable trolleybus network!

For example, the Act of Technical Condition (a copy is at the disposal of the Ed.) Emphasizes that “the examined elements of the contact / cable infrastructure comply with the technical requirements and are suitable for further operation ”. It is necessary to remove not only trolleybus wires, but even supports: the poles should be cut "at ground level without dismantling the foundation part, but with the improvement of the pavement".

In the technical report (a copy is at the disposal of the Ed.), The commission represented by the Chief Engineer of the Energy Services Department, the Deputy Director of the Energy Economy and the heads of the areas of the contact network must sign the “conclusion”: “The cancellation of the object is connected with the cessation of movement and the lack of prospects for the resumption of trolleybus traffic, as well as reducing the cost of operating the infrastructure of urban land passenger transport”.

Fortunately for trolleybus advocates, the beautification work in connection with the pandemic had to be suspended. However, on Krasnaya Presnya, the network was cut off in early June, including a new section near the Krasnopresnenskaya metro station. They say the practice of cutting it “on call” is a common thing. At the same time, as explained to "NI" in the press service of the Department of Overhaul, the improvement works "were paused before the special order of the mayor of Moscow".

"We do not conduct work on dismantling the contact network. Most likely, Mosgortrans is carrying out the work according to its plan”

The Department of Transport and Mosgortrans refused to respond to a series of requests from the editorial board of Novye Izvestia. According to our sources, the documents for dismantling the contact network have already been submitted for approval.