At the end of last week, I attended a meeting of the expert council under Moscow’s chief architect. The issue under discussion: **the reconstruction of Pushkinskaya Square with the development of underground space. **At that meeting, I realized that we will never defeat traffic jams. On the contrary, they will soon defeat us. So. There is always a traffic jam at Pushkinskaya, let’s come up with something, Yuri Mikhailovich said. His associate, a man named Ordzhonikidze, brought in investors. Turks. The Turks presented a project: an underground tunnel connecting the boulevards beneath Tverskaya Street. And as a small add-on, an underground shopping mall. At first glance, everything seems fine. But then it turns out that the mall includes parking for 900 cars, 700 of which are supposed to serve the mall’s employees and visitors. At the same time, the mall alone will have 3,500 permanent employees. Plus, of course, at least 15 times as many visitors. Even if we assume that only every 30th employee and visitor arrives by car, there would still be a shortage of at least 1,000 parking spaces. Which raises the question: where will all those cars go, and will this really eliminate the traffic jam on Tverskaya? As if that were not enough, access to the parking garage is supposed to be from the tunnel, which has two lanes in each direction. That means one of the two lanes will always be clogged with cars trying to enter the parking area. In response to the general outrage, the chief transport official from the General Plan office smiled sweetly and said that everything had been calculated by specialists. The council rejected the project outright. Nevertheless, most of its members are convinced that it will be carried out despite the opinion of the expert community. The Turks will pay their way through the approval process.