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Paving slabs on the streets of Moscow: the continuation of history

This article delves into the pavement of the streets of Moscow, exploring the unique history of the iconic slabs and their impact on the city’s architecture. The slabs, first seen in the 17th century, have been resiliently sturdy for hundreds of years, requiring very little repairs or maintenance. As a result,Moscow has retained its traditional elegance and charm while remaining resistant to the changes of time. Thanks to their distinctive center strips of granite, cobblestones, and other materials, the city’s landscape is imbued with character and grandeur, representing an intrinsic part of it’s history.

Spring. “The grass is turning green, the sun is shining” 
 Although it is not yet green, and the sun does not spoil it with warmth, but very soon the first leaves and greenery will appear on the lawns. And on the streets of Moscow, instead of ice and snow, workers will again appear – Sergei Sobyanin announced that in the spring work will continue on laying paving slabs on the streets of the center of the capital.

Paving slabs
Salvador Dali. The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory

Thus, last year’s story of replacing the asphalt pavement with concrete tiles will receive a completely logical and expected continuation – the Moscow mayor does not intend to abandon his plans. With the start of work on the sidewalks of the center of Moscow, the debate about the feasibility of the mayor’s initiative, which flared up last spring, will most likely continue..

Chronology of events

So, let us recall that back in March 2011, Sergei Sobyanin announced plans to replace over 90% of the asphalt on the sidewalks of the city center with more attractive and environmentally friendly tiles. The mayor, according to him, was guided solely by the convenience of Muscovites and care for their health. The advantages of using paving slabs were attributed to the authorities:

  1. Environmental friendliness. Asphalt melts in the sun and emits harmful substances such as benzene and benzopropylene into the atmosphere; moreover, according to ecologists, even in the process of asphalt production, much more harmful substances are released into the atmosphere than in the production of tiles. However, some experts, in particular, Alexey Kiselev, head of the toxic program of Greenpeace Russia, notes that asphalt is no less environmentally friendly material than paving slabs, and its harmful properties are greatly exaggerated.
  2. The tile looks more attractive and gives more room for decorative street decoration.
  3. International experience – in all European capitals sidewalks have long been tiled, the Moscow government decided to keep up.
  4. Decrease in heat transfer – dark asphalt heats up in the heat up to +60 degrees, while tiles – up to +35, Anton Kulbachevsky, head of the department of environmental management of the Moscow government, noted that with climate change the capital has to be equal not to Helsinki or Oslo, but rather to African cities and Hanoi, where pavement asphalt was never laid.
  5. Durability – the warranty period of asphalt pavement is 5 to 7 years, while high quality tiles can last up to 20 years. Moreover, if the asphalt has to be changed literally as a whole, then in the case of tiles it is possible to replace the damaged piece, which is especially important for Russian cities, where various “heating mains breakthroughs” are a very common phenomenon. However, in this case, the key phrase here will be “high quality tiles”, the defective coating will have to be repaired in a year (if not earlier).

Armed with such arguments in favor of tiles, the authorities of Belokamennaya in June held the first tender for the construction of new sidewalks. It was planned to replace over 4 million square meters of asphalt pavement, that is, about a quarter of the pedestrian space of the capital, of which 1.14 million “squares” are in the city center.

The June tender involved laying tiles at 18 objects in the center of the capital, including the Garden Ring, Prospekt Mira, Yakimanka, Vorobyovy Gory, Leninsky Prospect, Kremlin Ring and others. The starting amount of the state order was originally 2.78 billion rubles. Later, the total cost of work increased to 3.5 billion rubles, and by the end of July – to almost 4 billion.

It is not difficult to calculate that laying 1 square meter of tiles costs the treasury (or rather taxpayers) 3.5 thousand rubles.

For comparison – laying two-layer asphalt on the same area costs only 1.2 thousand rubles. Moreover, the cost of one “square” of tiles is only 500 rubles, the rest is for work, however, polls conducted by the correspondents of the magazine “Ogonyok” showed that migrant workers (mainly immigrants from Armenia) receive only 150-200 for each square meter of tile coverage. rubles. However, pricing in the case of large-scale government orders often becomes one of the most mysterious and confusing issues..

The tender was won by 11 companies, which then independently (as if without the participation of the authorities) entered into contracts with 8 manufacturers of paving slabs, then the number of suppliers was increased to 16, among the manufacturers were such companies as Krost, Komplex Stroyindustriya, Spetsstroy- Reinforced Concrete Products 17 “,” Company “Guarantee-Stroy”, LLC “Road Group”, LLC “SDSK” Dorstroy “and LLC” Mosoblsportstroy “.

The work began in mid-June; it was planned that by October 25, all 1.14 million square meters of tiles in the center of Moscow would be laid. However, to the surprise of both supporters and opponents of the tile company, in early August, the mayor announced that the work would be completed, or rather, suspended on 25 August. By this time, only 400 thousand square meters of tiles had been laid, that is, about a third of the planned volume. The reasons for this decision of the mayor were named:

  • public opinion – many Muscovites expressed dissatisfaction with the devastation that reigned on the sidewalks of the capital, the tiles themselves and the quality of their laying also began to cause fears among the townspeople. Also, the indignation of the city residents was caused by a sharp reduction in the number of parking spaces, which was clearly not enough in Moscow before;
  • lack of materials, since the manufacturing plants did not have time to supply the required amount of tiles. In particular, Pyotr Biryukov, deputy mayor for housing and communal services, spoke about this problem. However, the suppliers immediately denied this information, saying that they are fulfilling orders in full;
  • the need to redo work in some areas immediately after installation. It was found that in many places the tiles did not meet quality standards, and the work itself was not done properly. For example, new tiles had to be laid on the Kremlin embankment, as the prefecture of the Central Administrative District considered the results of the contractors’ work unsatisfactory. The work was rejected by the prefect of the Central Administrative District Sergei Baidakov, who noted that the tiles were laid unevenly and above the level of the curb. It was also necessary to reposition the coating on Radishchev Street. Such additional alterations, of course, delayed the work, so the authorities did not have time to cope with the entire volume before the frost. There were also completely inexplicable incidents, when workers, in a hurry to finish laying on time and receive their wages, simply painted tiles on concrete. What? Cheap, fast and practically indistinguishable from ordinary gray tiles.

Paving slabs
Tile painted on concrete near Mayakovskaya metro station. Source

Officials were quick to assure that this was just a bad joke of the workers, who, of course, would be fired. The concrete was dismantled, in its place there was an impressive hole for some time, then it was nevertheless laid with real tiles.

Sergei Sobyanin himself explained his decision as follows: at the end of August, many Muscovites return from their dachas to their native land, schoolchildren are going to school, so you should not inconvenience the townspeople who are forced to make their way through the destroyed sidewalks and mountains of tiles, it is better to postpone work until next spring.

It was unofficially noted that the problems with suppliers were far-fetched, for example, the government complained about the rise in price of concrete and, accordingly, paving slabs, while, according to experts, concrete did not increase in price by much – the usual seasonal increase in the cost of building materials associated with increased demand.

In addition, information appeared in the press that the authorities did not want to attract new suppliers of tiles, which could solve the problem with the lack of materials, since a new tender would have to be held. In addition, ordinary factories, according to Igor Zaugolnikov, director of the marketing communications department of the RODEX GROUP holding, may not be suitable due to “the related nature of the mayor’s office program, as everyone has already heard about.” There is a clear allusion to the wife of the Moscow mayor, whose connection with construction companies has been repeatedly discussed in the press, in connection with which Sergei Sobyanin was forced to come up with refutations (no one was finally convinced).

To be continued

Be that as it may, at the end of August all the work on laying tiles in the center of the capital was curtailed, but in early March the Department of Housing and Communal Services and Improvement of Moscow announced the opening of an electronic auction for the replacement of asphalt and concrete pavement coverings on tiled for 2012.

According to materials published on the public procurement website, the total initial cost of contracts is over 350 million rubles for 14 lots. The design documentation says that this time it is planned to lay about 102 thousand square meters of tiles, the completion date is August 25, 2012. To meet the deadline, contractors will have to work around the clock, including on weekends and holidays.

The auction will take place on April 16, then the winners will be determined, who will be responsible for laying tiles on Moscow sidewalks this year.

The Department’s documents specify that the work should take place on Sadovaya-Spasskaya Street, Yauzskiye Vorota Square, Yauzskaya Street, on Okhotny Ryad Street, Teatralnaya Square and Teatralny Proezd, on Lubyanskaya Square, on Myasnitskaya Street, Kremlin Embankment and Solyanka Street.

In addition, asphalt for tiles will be replaced on Sretenka Street, Smolenskaya-Sennaya Square, Kudrinskaya Square, Novinsky Boulevard, on Sadovaya Bolshaya and Sadovaya-Triumfalnaya Streets, Smolenskaya and Taganskaya Squares, on Sukharevskaya Small and Large Squares, as well as on Samotechnaya Street.

As you can see, the amount of work is planned to be quite large, however, before commenting on the resumption of the tile epic, I would like to know how the tiles laid last year overwintered. After all, all the experts unanimously stated that only by the results of winter it will be seen whether the coating meets all quality standards and whether it will differ in durability.

Immediately, we note that it is too early to sum up the results – the snow in Moscow has not yet completely melted, the examination of the state of last year’s tiles is planned to be carried out closer to May.

However, in the opinion of Muscovites, many fears that had appeared in the summer, in the process of observing the laying of the coating, have been confirmed. It turned out that:

A) The tiles are still much more slippery than asphalt! Even despite the fact that the mayor promised to use only rough, non-slip tiles when laying, in comparison with asphalt, it clearly loses, and such a coating was not laid everywhere.

For example, you can only walk along Osenny Boulevard along a bicycle or asphalt path, everything else is covered with a crust of ice.

Paving slabs
Autumn boulevard
Paving slabs
Bicycle path on Osenny Boulevard. Source

B) In many places, the tiles began to deteriorate in December, before severe frosts. So, Mikhail Anshakov, chairman of the consumer rights protection society “Public Control”, in early December reported that they received numerous complaints from Muscovites about uneven coverage, and to see the holes in the tiles there is no need to go far – the destruction is already visible near the office of the society on Smolenskaya area. Alexander Strelnikov, a leading researcher at the Central Research and Design Institute for Urban Planning, noted that the reason for this “spreading” of the tiles was most likely the poor quality of the concrete substrate, which was made too thin.

C) For some reason, the workers who laid the tiles for some reason forgot to do the grooves for water drain and the slope by standards, so impressive puddles of water accumulate on the new sidewalks, which, of course, become a real ice rink in cold weather.

D) When laying tiles in Moscow, the rules were violated, provided for the protection and safety of visually impaired and blind citizens. According to European standards, sidewalks should be additionally fitted with tactile, “pimpled” tiles of exactly yellow color (this shade is perceived better than others by visually impaired pedestrians). But our workers perceived such a tile as an element of decor, and on some streets it literally lies in zigzags, and in other places it is replaced by a guide. And our housing and communal services do not know how to care for such tactile tiles at all, so it will not last long with such operation..

Even those Muscovites who agreed that it was necessary to change the asphalt to the tiles ended up dissatisfied with the quality of the tiles themselves and the work done.

E) There is no special equipment in Moscow for cleaning tiled sidewalks. In European cities, small, almost toy, maneuverable cars that do not damage the tiles are used for these purposes. In addition, it is impossible to sprinkle tiled sidewalks with crushed stone, as well as breaking off ice with crowbars, which is traditionally practiced by our janitors..

We have to sum up that even those Muscovites who agreed that it is necessary to change the asphalt for tiles (according to the survey results – 33% of city residents, more than 52% suggested leaving everything as it is and tackling more pressing problems), in the end, were dissatisfied with the quality and the tile itself and the work performed. So, in many places, tiles from different batches noticeably differ in color (dark gray and light gray, for example), which looks, to put it mildly, not very beautiful, and on Sadovy, in some places, in a hurry, there are “gaps” between tile sections again filled with the same asphalt.

It is still unknown how the work will be carried out this year, I would like to believe that the authorities will try to correct last year’s mistakes, move the poor-quality tiles, put things in order and will closely monitor the progress of work. The results of the new stage of the tiled history can only be judged by the end of August.

In general, paving slabs in themselves are a good thing, really durable and attractive in appearance. But! The tiles must be of high quality and fit strictly according to the rules and standards, so that the very idea of ​​the government of the capital is not bad and fully meets modern trends in urban planning, the question is not in the plans of the mayor’s office, but in how exactly they will be implemented.

I think that none of the residents and guests of the capital would mind if the sidewalks of Belokamennaya looked something like this:

Paving slabs
Tile in the style of “Old Town”

And if at the same time puddles did not gather on the sidewalks, and the tiles did not slip, all Muscovites would unanimously support the mayor’s initiative..

In the meantime, unfortunately, in relation to Moscow sidewalks, only the well-known expression “We wanted the best, but it turned out as always” suggests itself, and no expert will be able to guess when the situation will change for the better.

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Comments: 1
  1. Liam Richardson

    It’s fascinating how the paving slabs on the streets of Moscow represent a part of the city’s rich history. I’m curious to know more about the significance behind these slabs. How and when were they first introduced, and have they been maintained and preserved over the years? Is there any particular reason why they were chosen as the preferred type of pavement in Moscow? Overall, I’m eager to understand how the continuation of history is reflected in something as seemingly mundane as the city’s paving slabs.

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