Kremlin Chiefs Get Own Lane in Tunnel to Beat Moscow Jams

His presidential convoy is already a common sight. But Moscow drivers forced to wait while Vladimir Putin whizzes past received more bad news yesterday when it emerged that the Russian president is to get his own fast lane in a tunnel that is meant to relieve traffic congestion.

Kremlin developers revealed they are planning a new tunnel in Novy Arbat, one of central Moscow's most traffic-choked avenues. As well as three lanes for ordinary drivers it will have a special lane for Kremlin bosses.

Traffic police already block off Moscow's roads to allow Mr Putin to speed from his rustic dacha in Novo-Ogaryovo, just outside Moscow, to his Kremlin office. But the tunnel plan has raised hackles among Moscow's leading architects, who suggest the project will make chronic traffic problems even worse.

"This doesn't make sense," Yuri Bocharov, a member of Russia's Academy of Architecture, told the newspaper Isvestiya yesterday. "The overall traffic handling capacity will be decreased."

Built in the 1960s, Novy Arbat goes past a glitzy strip of shops and restaurants as well as the capital's biggest bookshop and an old orthodox church used in the past by the Russian novelist Nikolai Gogol.

It has four lanes in either direction. But the new tunnel in effect will only have three because one of them has been exclusively allocated for the Kremlin leaders, Mr Bocharov pointed out. Above ground the road will be pedestrianised. "The situation will become worse," he predicted.

Yesterday, Mosproject, the state-owned consortium responsible, said the £360m project was a visionary way of dealing with the capital's traffic problems. Other cities in Europe had tunnelled when all available surface space was used up, said project manager Mikhail Posokin.