A perfect reason to publish the reply that was sent to one of the citizens who supported our campaign and demanded the release of information about how the Moscow Metro operates.
Here is the reason: one month after the metro accident, Deputy Mayor for Transport Liksutov gave an interview to *Rossiyskaya Gazeta* (the Russian government newspaper):
And then there is a lot more about how wonderfully they are doing everything.
Now let’s look not at the interview written by PR people, but at the actual response written by Liksutov’s deputy. We asked for this, and got this instead:
In other words: no-thing. No report, no accounting documents, no plan, no fare justification. Every internal document of the Moscow Metro remains classified. And this is the official position of the department headed by Liksutov.
We are not asking for security plans for bridges and tunnels. We are not asking for Metro-2 (the rumored secret underground system for officials). But how can you keep documents justifying the fare hidden?
Maybe they at least published the 2013 annual report? Let’s check the website:
It is now August 2014. A month ago, the biggest accident in the system’s history took place. Liksutov is giving interviews about how he and Sobyanin are fighting for openness. The Metro’s 2013 report is nowhere to be found.
That’s it. There is your objective fact for judging these people’s work. No nitpicking, no rhetoric, and so on.
And you still ask why I do not like Liksutov. He lies constantly, brazenly, and all real work has been replaced by endless PR, which keeps an endless swarm of Liksutov’s PR handlers and hangers-on well fed.
People are asking for answers and documents? What does a normal official do? Publish the documents. What does a PR operative do? Launch a campaign called "LET’S RESTORE TRUST IN THE SUBWAY THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA POLLS."
What even is that? Give us the report and the fare calculation, instead of inventing a new income stream for crooks with bot networks.
Be sure to watch Sobchak’s program on TV Rain (an independent Russian TV channel) about the accident. It is, by the way, an excellent piece of journalism. Among other things, it does a good job of exposing several highly questionable episodes in the Metro’s dealings with Transmashholding, a company dear to Liksutov. This is the trailer; the full version is here.
There have been no answers to Sobchak’s questions.
We keep asking questions. There are no answers.
There was an investigation by Vedomosti, claiming that spending on Metro safety was cut while money was wasted on all sorts of nonsense, such as hiring private security firms and expanding above-ground retail. There have been no answers to those questions either.
Milov wrote a report titled "Liksutov: The Results". Fine then—take the numbers, bring in experts, refute it. Silence.
The truth is that there are neither numbers nor experts. Try to find even one genuinely substantive discussion based on current, verifiable data about the Moscow Metro. You will not find one. There is only phony statistics.
And there are hundreds of millions of rubles allocated to projects such as "parking PR". Those hundreds of millions of rubles are distributed in curious ways and produce all sorts of "experts" roaming the internet with their greatest hits: "Liksutov may steal, but at least he gets things done," "Liksutov does not need to steal—he was already rich before," and "the experts are laughing at you.*"
As a result, any real discussion about the development of public transport gets replaced by conversations about the benefits of bike lanes.
Dear Sergey Semyonovich and Maxim Stanislavovich. We agree that bike lanes are useful. Now please stop lying about openness and disclose the key documents and performance indicators of the country’s largest public transport enterprise—the Moscow Metro.