Firstly about long distance transport: as you know, distances can be very long in Russia, from Moscow to the Pacific Ocean it takes 6 days by train. To the Urals little over 1 day, to Western Siberia 1,5-2 days, to Eastern Siberia (Irkutsk, Lake Baikal) around 4 days. And, on the other hand, from the big cities within 1-2 hours of train or driving there is usually absolutely nothing, just small villages.

Therefore trains are almost all with sleeping places (only), which during the day can be used as sitting places, but not so comfortably. Usually people just sleep/lay during the day as well. I wrote earlier about trains, and their popularity, so although I write this post on the train from Yekat to Moscow (there is no wifi, not even socket, i will put it online in Moscow tomorrow, on Saturday), now i don't write more about trains, let's check it's alternatives. First, the car:

Between the big cities there are federal highways, from Yekaterinburg there are two (at least) federal highways leading to Moscow, and recently (maybe last year) the federal highway was completed all the way to Eastern Siberia. These federal highways are usually 2 lanes per direction, with stone or steel fence in the middle, but not nacessarily, some far eastern sections are simply twice one lane, like all small roads in Europe. But even they are twice two lane, it doesn't mean that there is not traffic light, or even left turn possibility (good luck for that ...). Intersections where all directions avoid each other, like in European highway intersections, are very rare, just near big cities. At other places, if you go to a village which is on the left side of the road, you either have to turn left (after long wait, dangerously), or go to the next place where it is possible to turn back, it can be 1-2 or 10-20 kms away, This place is a gap in the fence in the middle, and some area for 2-3 cars, you have to go there from the inner traffic lane (breaking there is dangerous of course), and wait there until you feel brave enough to enter the opposite side's inner lane, where cars come by 80-90km/h, and you are at 0km/h. At this places, the road is wide, so although there is no separate lane for turning back (and nobody cares about lanes anyway, often they are not painted at all), you have good chance that the Mercedes coming by 90km/h will have space to avoid you.

Roads in Russia are in very bad condition especially compared to Europe, you all the time have to watch the road surface, and you will still fall into big holes every now and then, because they make up most of the surface. Maybe that's why rich people like to buy Mercedes or Lexus jeep, with a normal car it's impossible to safely go by over 60km/h. And it's good if the inner height of your car is big enough, otherwise if your head is near the roof, you will hit it every minute...

I have no experience with going far (>150kms) by car or bus in Russia, but Julia, who traveled to Volgograd and Nizhni Novgorod with his father by car, and has more information abt this, said that overnighting at rest stations is very dangerous, and some routes itself are dangerous, especially if the traffic is low, "pirates" can come and rob you, and calling police doesn't help, even if the local police is not "business partner" of the people who robbed you, it will take hours when they arrive, and all what they do is to fill out different papers.

An other alternative for long distance travel is to fly, all big cities have airport, from Yekat there are flights to Moscow every 1-2 hours, many different airlines, most of them were born as a result of partial privatisation of Aeroflot. However, Aeroflot is still the biggest of them and they have the most modern aircraft fleet, smaller airlines still operate with the aircrafts what they got at the privatisation 20 years ago (for example Ural Airlines has many old loud aircrafts which are not even allowed in some EU countires now). According to our knowledge S7 (Siberian Airlines) is probably the best of them, they have new Airbuses, good English website, and promo fares if you book in advance.

Flying the same route is 2-2.5 times the price of the train, platskart. In winter, the train is cheaper, so the difference is more than is summer.

That's all about long distance transport, now let's see what alternatives you have for city transport. Firstly: forget bicycle. Yes, Russians know what is bicycle, and it's possible to buy it, but people only use it in parks, after they took it there by car, or pushed it on the pavement. It's simply not worth suffering with it on the streets, i guess it wouldn't surprise you at all if i say that there is not even a meter bikeroad in Yekat. But it's not true! There is, maybe around 1 km long, they just painted it this year. But: on this one km, approximately 4-5 times it crosses stairs, sometimes just 4-5 stairs, sometimes more. And this tells everything about the cycling "culture", or the lack of it, nobody considers bike as a transport device, and some stupid idiot city planners probably saw in their vacation in Germany that there are lanes for bikes, and they decided to make it in Yekat, just they forgot what is the purpose of it. On the picture, "bikeroad" in Yekat, unusable (unless you can make a 90° turn and then jump 4 stairs), but good marketing preparation for Expo 2020. Of course riding on the road is very dangerous, drivers are mad, road is shit, never try.

Walking or rollerskate: i tried both, in rush hours in the city center these two are the two fastest (faster than car), but rollerskating is not so enjoyable. I almost always beat the public transport by the skates, but pavement surface of often very bad, and at every crossroad there is a huge gap between the road and the pavement surface, and it is needed to completely stop, and step over the gap. Also, i only fell once, on tram rail (when crossing it), but it's very likely to fall as there are huge holes on the asphalt (or no asphalt for a few meters at all). On the picture usual pavement on a bridge near our home.

Buses: as i already wrote, our bus, whith what the 4 kms to the center takes around 30mins, in rush hour 40, comes every 7-32minutes according to the official timetable. In my opinion it already makes it unusable, but to top it up, there vere several occasions when we waited over 40mins. Also, accoring to the timetable, every day the last is at 23:15, that sounds quite good, at least a fix time. But in reality, there are no buses after 9pm, or around 8pm in weekend. So if u wait for the 23:15 bus you can wait until morning or take a taxi like everybody else. But even if you catch a bus, after a "fast" (understand: 30-40kms/h) few hundread meters in our district, it stops at the end of the queue, and it never again reaches such futuristic speed.

Trams, trolleybuses: there are several problems with them: firstly, their routes are often stupid, especially for trams. Secondly, they also stay at the traffic jam, bus lanes are non existant, the tram rails are always asphalted allowing careless drivers to even block the tram for only the hope of getting a few cars ahead. Sometimes the 300m route between 2 tram stations can take 10-15minutes in the center. Also, often cars crash each other or the tram on the tram rails, and in this case tram opens it's doors and do svidanie, if you don't want to wait an hour or two to get home without buying an other ticket for bus or marshrutka. Same for trolleybus. And also, the trams and trolleybuses are often to depo only, not the full length of the line. Especially in rush hours, when there are a lot of people waiting, empty trolleybus is only to depo, and then, 20 people has to get on a 13-person marshrutka (minibus) to get home somehow. That's why marshrutkas take over 50% of all passenger kilometres while the capacity of other public transport is many times more, but the empty trams and trolleybuses are publicly operated and the marshrutkas are private companies. In in the state company, nobody cares, especially about passengers.

Car: the same traffic jam issues, plus, if your bus or marshrutka or tramway has accident, you just walk away and buy a new ticket, but if your own car, that's different. Also, driving in Russia is bad for your nerves, with European driving you cannot even make the futuristic 20kms/h average, because everybody who wants to reach such good speed, has to be very agressive and has to not care about rules. For example, at Sovietskaya/Uralskaya crossroad, it's impossible to turn left in green. So, even buses wait for the red, and then, very dangerously a few meters in front of the crossing cars, they turn left. This usually succeeds after 2-3 reds, because they need to be first at the crossroad and the driver has to collect all courage.

Of course every now and then there are accidents, which make trffic jams even bigger, if it is possible at all.

Finally, a little bit about commuter transport: Koltsovo, 15-20kms from the center of Yekat, is one of the biggest suburbs of Yekat. It's also the place for the airport. So let's see what are your choices to commute: bus #1 to center takes 1 hour, in rush hours around 1.5 hour. Costs only 18 roubles, a single ticket. You can go by car, if you drive agressively and illegally enough, maybe you can make it in 45 mins in the morning. But more like 1 hour. And, the most comfortable solution is Airport-Express train. It is always empty, you have plenty of space. It runs twice a day, one is in the middle of the night, one is in the middle of the day, it takes exactly one hour (but no traffic jam!), costs 50 roubles, and thanks to it's timetable it's completely unuseable.

Transport is the biggest issue in my experience is living in a big city like Yekaterinburg, although i worked for home, so i didn't face work related issues which also can be huge, donno. On the picture, the best transport device what i met in Russia :)

Thanks for reading it, quite long, isn't it. There will be one more post and then again the blog takes a long rest.