MOSCOW, December 25. /TASS/. Traffic jams measuring ten points on a 1-to-10 scale, which formed in Moscow City on Thursday afternoon after a high-intensity snowfall had started forming snow banks on the roads and sidewalks, began to disperse slowly by 20:00 hours but traffic remained highly constrained even after that.
According to reports by the press service of the city’s road police department, the speed of both public transport and private cars did not exceed 22 km per hour in many areas of the downtown and on some streets, especially the ones adjoining the Garden Ring that encircles the historical center of the city, it was as small as 10 km per hour.
Rublyovskoye Shosse Road in western Moscow was one of the few city roads where cars could move at the standard 60 km per hour.
The snow cover that had been accumulating since early morning reached almost 17 centimeters by 19:00 hours.
The slowdown affected the normal schedules of trolleys, busses and trams almost everywhere across the city.
As it often happens at times when the elements of nature go wild, drivers, passengers and pedestrians on the streets started showing heightened solidarity with one another. For instance, a video uploaded in the Internet showed a big enough group of people trying to push a bus out of a snow bank that had entrapped it.
Scenes of people helping their fellow-drivers to free their cars from captivity in the snow were quite frequent on Thursday.