The Kyivavtodor municipal road corporation has explained that Kyiv roads are in poor technical condition because they have reached the end of their service lives and the volume of annual road maintenance is low.
Kyivavtodor's General Director Heorhii Hlynskyi announced this at a meeting of senior officials of the Kyiv municipal administration.
According to him, 80% of the road surfaces in Kyiv have been in use for 15-30 years, which is 1.5-3 times more than the standard period (12 years).
Kyivavtodor estimates the cost of major repairs on these 80% of Kyiv roads, which total 16 million square meters, at UAH 7.6 billion.
According to him, the current situation is because routine maintenance of roads has been only 47% of the annual requirement since 1997.
Another reason for the poor state of Kyiv roads is the poor quality of road construction materials and equipment that were used to perform maintenance in the 1980-1990 period, frequent stripping of road surface because of accidents, a sharp increase in the intensity of automobile traffic, the lack of a legislative framework for organization of truck traffic, and the disparity between the design load and the current load.
Kyivavtodor said that the only source of funds for financing maintenance of roads is budget revenues from taxes paid by automobile owners.
According to Hlynskyi, these taxes are expected to amount to UAH 154 million in 2009, out of which 30% will be transferred into the budget of the Kyiv region for financing maintenance and repair of roads on the territory of the region.
As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the Kyiv municipal administration has set up a service for rapid reaction to citizens' requests related to repair of roads.
The municipal administration has decided to repair 54 roads in 2009.
The Kyiv municipal council adopted the municipal budget for 2009 in March with revenues of UAH 18.163 billion and expenditures of UAH 18.163 billion, including expenditures of UAH 391.148 million on transportation, road maintenance, communications, telecommunications, and information technology.
Kyivavtodor maintains 1,630 kilometers of road with a total surface of 26.2 million square meters (including sidewalks).
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