RUSSIA: Life Is Like That Only: Not Automatons

MOSCOW (Russia Profile), February 4, 2008 Not Automatons Comment By Georgy Bovt, Special to Russia Profile In Russia, Services that are Carried Out by Machines Elsewhere are Still Done by Hand It's rush hour at the Pushkinskaya metro station in central Moscow. There are 30 people in line at the window that sells metro passes. The wait will be 15 minutes, if not longer. I used this station in the Soviet era, and instead of waiting in line to buy my metro ticket, I could simply drop 5 kopecks into the turnstile slot. So in some sense, the process of paying your fare to ride the metro was automated to a much greater extent then than it is today. In the past 30 years, the turnstiles in the Moscow metro have changed a little; they are now equipped to read magnetic metro tickets. But at the same time, during rush hour, there are now huge lines at the ticket windows. It is the beginning of the 21st century, but there is no automation of ticket sales: tickets are sold by the same elderly and probably not very well paid ladies, who are not very polite after all their intense dealings with all these would-be passengers. In the Moscow metro, you can't buy your ticket from a machine – not for cash, and especially not with a credit card, although such technological procedures have long ago been mastered in many other countries all the countries that have subways. Many places also have such machines for buying tickets for buses or other surface transport. But not in Moscow. These technologies have not yet arrived on the streets of Russian cities. Moreover, Moscow remains perhaps the world's only city of this size where the many different types of public transportation are not connected in any meaningful way. You can buy a single monthly pass for all forms of transportation, but there is no common form of payment, no common information system. Read More © Russia Profile.org 2008