"Worn out" and full of holes: What’s happening to the pavement in Syktyvkar
Sidewalks in the center of Syktyvkar have changed dramatically in the past 10 years. Beginning in 2006 paving stones were laid and an especially large-scale campaign occurred in 2010 and 2011. However, a short time later the tiles almost everywhere began to crumble and break. Walking through the central streets is now similar to passing through an obstacle course. The situation has only worsened over the last five years. Now city sidewalks are unpresentable gaping holes in the center of the city. A reporter from online magazine 7x7 set out to try to understand how such a situation became even possible.
The city "laid" stones on 10 streets
Paving blocks began to appear on the streets of Syktyvkar back in 2004 when Sergei Katunin was still mayor (he left office in 2005). The process of paving the sidewalks with these stones was continued by the next head of the administration, Roman Zenishchev. The campaign for improving pedestrian areas in the city center become a large scale project in 2010.
At the time the mayor's office concluded a contract with the company ASV for an amount of more than 6.7 million rubles. According to the press service of the city administration, paving stones appeared on the parts of the streets of Pervomayskaya, Kommunisticheskaya, Internatsionalnaya, Babushkina, and others.
In 2011, paving stones were laid on a few streets. This time the company Komitekhinvest, which also was awarded a municipal contract in the amount of RUR 16,670,000, was involved. Paving stones wereplaced on Kommunisticheskaya, Ordzhonikidze, Lenina, Domny Kalikovoi, Internatsionalnaya, Babushkina, among others.
At the same time there are streets where the pavement work was not conducted by ASV or Komitekhinvest. In response to an official request made by 7x7 to Syktyvkar City Hall clarified that the tiles on the sidewalks could be laid byhousing cooperativesor management companies who own the area around the buildings. More precise information was not provided by the city administration, as the mayor's office does not control the housing cooperatives or management companies in question who have been upgrading the area around the buildings. Simply put, city hall does not know when and how the paving stones in these areas appeared where work was not carried out by ASV and Komitekhinvest in 2010 and 2011.
City Hall doesn't control the quality of the pavement
In 2011, a year after paving, the paving stones began to crumble and break. However, it wasn’t a large-scale disaster. The big problems began in 2012. After the snow melted in the spring the paving stones were in disrepair. The stones sank, some of them just broke and there were holes. Claims were made against the work of ASV and Komitekhinvest.
People with disabilities experienced difficulties. Those that do not have mechanical wheelchairs (devices with an engine), were barely able to cross the gaps and bumps in the pavement.
In the mayor's office it was noted that officials can not control the quality of paving that is laid for sidewalks. The written reply of the administration states that it complies with state standards. The work of ASV and Komitekhinvestwere evaluated bythe Utilities Management Administration, who have not identified any serious violations. Work completion documents are not available at City Hall.
The pavement continued to deteriorate after 2012. By the summer of 2016 it was difficult to find areas in in the city where where the sidewalks didn’t feature gaping holes.
A correspondent from 7x7 walked through the central streets of Syktyvkar and counted the number of damaged and broken "bricks" in front of each building, where suchpaving stones were laid. This inventory lasted five days. The journalist walked the following streets: Sovetskaya, Lenina, Internatsionalnaya, Pervomaiskaya, Karla Marksa, Kuratova, Kommunisticheskaya, Babushkina and Ordzhonikizde.
A total of 14,450 damaged paving fragments were counted on these streets. If a stone was missing entirely or was practically unusable it was counted as a damaged unit. If the stone was partially broken, then it was counted as a half unit. The result was an area equal to four lanes in a fifty-meter swimming pool.
Who do the sidewalks belong to?
Who is to blame for the fact that the sidewalks in the center of Syktyvkar are covered by "ulcers" and holes? The answer of who owns the land and who it was installing the stones is the key to understanding the situation as a whole. If the pedestrian zone belong to homeowner’s associations and the management companies, then it would be them. If, however, the mayor's office is responsible for the broken sidewalks, then it should be local officials.
On the public cadastral map, all the areas where it is indicated that the paving stones were laid in Syktyvkar, are public lands. In most cases it is municipal property and less often state property.
The local area, which can capture a part of the sidewalk, is calculated according to a special formula. On average it is 1-2 meters away from the curb. A fully pedestrian zone in the street does not belong to the homeowner’s association or a management company, said Svetlana Paleva, the director of the Center for Housing Settlements of Syktyvkar, in an interview with 7x7.
“All sidewalks are municipal,” said Paleva. “And the municipality decides when to make repairs that build up. If the area will be given to a building, then the building [homeowner’s association or management company] could put up a fence there. And then what would the municipality do? The municipality has to hold on to these sidewalks of common use.”
The answers of officials and other discrepancies
A correspondent from 7x7 sent the mayor of the city four requests for information concerning the condition of the sidewalks. Correspondence began in June and lasted more than three months. The mayor's office argued that the paving stones in some areas were put in by homeowner’s associations and management companies. The city administration repeatedly refused to verbally explain the situation. In written answers there are contradictions and inconsistencies. 7x7 decided to find out from the owner of the building if they carried out the work.
Ulitsa Sovetskaya
For example, in response to a journalistrequest from June 18, which was signed by the head of the press service of the city administration of Syktyvkar Marina Lysakovskaya, all of the streets where the paving stones were laid by ASV and Komitekhinvest are listed. In other wordsall were carried out by municipal contract. Among these there are no addresses on Sovetskaya ulitsa.
One of the most "broken" sidewalks is located near the police building at Sovetskaya 63 (according to the mayor's office, the administration did not lay any paving stones there). There the paving stones have not only fallen into disrepair. In the pedestrian zone there are holes, which are lacking dozens of "bricks." As Vera Zheleztsova, the head of the press service of the Interior Ministry in Komi told 7x7, the sidewalk along the building does not belong to the Ministry. Paving stones were laid there by order of the administration when Zenishchev was still in charge (from 2005-2011).
Another problematic building Sovetskaya ulitsa 8. The paving stones were laid about five years ago. As Viktor Chechko, the former chairman of the homeowner’s association of the building said (he left office in August 2016), the pavement has worn down.
“The paving stones were not in very good condition. They began to crumble, were worn down and got “fatigued,” said Chechko.
In response to a query by 7x7 dated September 8, the press service of the mayor's office admitted that the land on the front of Sovetskaya 8 is still considered public land and thus it is being handled by the municipal Road Infrastructure enterprise.
Ulitsa Kommunisticheskaya
In response to a request dated June 18, it is stated that ASV and Komitekhinvest laid paving stones on Kommunisticheskaya ulitsa near Children's Polyclinic №2, as well as some near the State Council of the Komi Republic and the administration of the regional head and the Civil Service Academy (building numbers 8, 9-11). In addition, the document also attests to the laying of stones "on Kommunisticheskaya," in other words along the entire length of the street.
Now the stones have been laid for most of the length from building number 33 (near the "ring") up to number 85 (near the train station). This is about half the length of Kommunisticheskaya ulitsa, roughly half a kilometer. It is also the most problematic area for pedestrians with plenty of holes and bare spots.
In response to a request from September 8, 2016 the head of the City Hall press service Marina Lysakovsky "elaborated" on the first answer. According to her, only a total of 77 square meters of paving stones as commissioned by City Hall were laid on Kommunisticheskaya ulitsa. "We do not have the information where it states where these stones were exactly laid on Kommunisticheskaya," the document says.
Who did the work?
1. Firms under municipal contract
We would like to recall that paving stones were laid by two companies according to municipal contract: ASV and Komitekhinvest. The first has already been liquidated and the other is currently in the process of being liquidated.
2. The owners of stores and offices
The owners of shops, retail spaces and offices located on Kommunisticheskaya ulitsa have admitted that paving stones were laid a few years ago at their own expense. Some were approached by the mayor's office with an offer to help repairthe area to celebrate the 85th anniversary of the founding of the Komi Republic in 2006. Others laid paving stones later.
“I'm in front of the store Vorkuta [at Kommunisticheskaya ulitsa 65]. I laid all of the stones here myself. I did the same near the supermarket [Oktyabrsky Prospect 53] and at the "ring." We were preparing for the 85th anniversary of the republic. We were gathered at City Hall and told that we had to work to clean up the town together. So, I laid the stones. I didn’t want customers walking around the store to stumble. And now the stones there are in very good condition,” saidGalina Lapshina, the director of the store Prodtovary.
A representative of Sberbank also said that the paving stones in front of the office at Kommunisticheskaya ulitsa 25 were laidby the bank on its own initiative (this is one of the most broken sections). Sberbank has not been able to clarify when this happened.
The owners of other shops and offices on Kommunisticheskaya ulitsa could not answer the questions posed by 7x7 concerning who laid the stones. Over the past 10 years, the premises have changed owners and tenants several times.
Why are they breaking?
There is no conclusive answer to this question.
An anonymous source in the mayor's office in Syktyvkar noted that perhaps this was due to improper cleaning of the sidewalks. In 2011 and 2012 the paving stones quickly came into disrepair because the sidewalks were cleaned by heavy tractors in winter. Under the weight of the tractors the cover sagged and became deformed. The bulldozers with their buckets virtually stripped some areas of their paving stones. Only in subsequent years did the mayor's office decide to clean the sidewalks with small trucks.
Alexander Arteev, the director of the Syktyvkar firm Artstroi, thinks that a breach of manufacturing technology is among the possible causes of the ruined pavement. According to him, after the stones were produced, they had to be stored in a warehouse for about two months. While in storage, a special component was to push all of the moisture out of the paving stones to turn them into rocks, enabling them not to fall apart for a few years. Arteev suggested that in some parts of the city "wet" paving stones were laid, in other words those that had been made just a few days before. Firms were in a hurry to fulfill the municipal contract.
Has the mayor acknowledged the problems with the pavement?
The mayor's office in Syktyvkar repeatedly refused to help the correspondent make contacts in the Department of Housing and Communal Services regarding the paving of the stones during a private conversation with 7x7. Therefore the question of the pavement was posed to mayor Andrei Samodelkin after thesessionof the mayor’s office was opened to the public.
Conclusions
There are a few and they are all unnerving.
1. The state of the pedestrian infrastructure in some places is at times catastrophic. This conclusion is based on a visual inspection of the streets by a 7x7 correspondent.
2. The mayor's office does not know exactly where, by whom or when the paving stones were laid in the central streets.
3. As can be seen from the answers of the mayor's office to the request for information from 7x7, officials conduct an annual survey of sidewalks and determine areas for repair. Over the last 4-5 years the areas with paving stones on the central streets of the city, where people walk the most, were never listed as needing repair.
4. The mayor's office does not have the resources to repair all the sidewalks in one year: there’s not enough money. In 2016, officials repaired a total of 12 sites.
Cement instead of paving stones
They have assured us at the mayor's office that the practice of laying of paving stones according to municipal contracts on the sidewalks will not continue. This was stated in the answer to the inquiry by 7x7. And now the officials are trying to solve the problem the best that they can. They have begun filling in holes with cement. At a minimum this work was carried out in August by the municipal enterprise Dorozhnoe khozyaistvo in front of the store Detsky Mir and the Russian Gymnasium.
Cheap.Angry. Ugly. Unpresentable. But it is better than holes in the pavement.