sergey_cheban dropped something very interesting in the comments. A certain St. Petersburg official responsible for city improvement gave an interview. In it, among other things, he said that each underground pedestrian crossing costs the city budget 550 million rubles (about $6 million USD), while maintaining a single pedestrian zone costs the city around 40 million rubles per year (about $435,000 USD). **A group of civic-minded St. Petersburg residents looked at those figures, were pretty stunned, and sent a request asking for the full cost estimates for maintaining pedestrian zones and building underground crossings. The correspondence went on for several months, but in the end the officials still refused to provide the estimates, claiming that "this information does not affect your rights and freedoms" (?!?!). The civic-minded residents have now gone to court, demanding that the actions of the officials from the Committee for Improvement and Road Management be declared unlawful, and that they be compelled to provide the previously requested information. Honestly, the phrase "the St. Petersburg government is hiding from residents the cost estimate for maintaining pedestrian zones" sounds completely absurd. And yet, that's exactly what's happening. Looking at the numbers, you can only assume the city improvement committee has something to hide. There's probably a line in the budget that says something like "purchase of a fleet of Maserati cars for field trips aimed at оперативный monitoring of the drainage system and the cleanliness of underground crossings." Details. The civic-minded residents of St. Petersburg are doing a great job. If there were a couple hundred groups like this across the country, they would do more to fight corruption than all those endless programs, investigative committees, and audit chambers combined.
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