The Minsk Ring Road, or MKAD (МКАД), is the name of the

beltway A ring road (also known as circular road, beltline, beltway, circumferential (high)way, loop or orbital) is a road or a series of connected roads encircling a town, city or country. The most common purpose of a ring road is to assist in reducin ...

that goes around

Minsk Minsk (, ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Belarus, located on the Svislach (Berezina), Svislach and the now subterranean Nyamiha, Niamiha rivers. As the capital, Minsk has a special administrative status in Belarus and is the administra ...

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

. MKAD is an abbreviation of Minsk Automobile Ring Road (; ). The road straddles the Minsk

city limits City limits or city boundaries refer to the defined boundary (real estate), boundary or border of a city. The area within the city limit can be called the city proper. Town limit/boundary and village limit/boundary apply to towns and villages. ...

History

Early history

The road was built between 1956 and 1963. In the beginning the road had just one lane in each direction and the width of the roadway was 7.5 meters. Reconstruction began in 1980. The result was 26.8 km with four lanes with the remaining section, 29.4 km, having two lanes.

Recent developments and current conditions

At the end of the 1990s, the road was used by 16,000-18,000 automobiles daily and had level crossings,

traffic lights Traffic lights, traffic signals, or stoplights – also known as robots in South Africa, Zambia, and Namibia – are signaling devices positioned at road intersections, pedestrian crossings, and other locations in order to control the flow o ...

and

bus A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a motor vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van, but fewer than the average rail transport. It is most commonly used ...

stops. Thus, on 7 August 2001, President

Alexander Lukashenko Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko (also transliterated as Alyaksandr Ryhoravich Lukashenka; born 30 August 1954) is a Belarusian politician who has been the first and only president of Belarus since the office's establishment in 1994, making hi ...

ordered its reconstruction, with the completion due by November 2002. The decision was met with controversy as the route passed through

Kurapaty Kurapaty (, ) is a wooded area on the outskirts of Minsk, Belarus, where a vast number of people were executed between 1937 and 1941 during the Great Purge by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD and in particular, during the Soviet repressions i ...

, north of Minsk, site of a

mass grave A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may Unidentified decedent, not be identified prior to burial. The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of exec ...

of victims of the

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

secret police image:Putin-Stasi-Ausweis.png, 300px, Vladimir Putin's secret police identity card, issued by the East German Stasi while he was working as a Soviet KGB liaison officer from 1985 to 1989. Both organizations used similar forms of repression. Secre ...

, the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

, during the

Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...

of 1937-1941. Estimates of those murdered there range into the hundreds of thousands, but the site has not been properly investigated or bodies exhumed. Protesters accused Lukashenko, who does not recognize the Kurapaty case and never mentions it in public, of planning to destroy the site and build over the graves of its victims in a deliberate attempt to cover over a Soviet

crime against humanity Crimes against humanity are certain serious crimes committed as part of a large-scale attack against civilians. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity can be committed during both peace and war and against a state's own nationals as well as ...

. In 2001, protesters from the Belarusian Popular Front, Zubr and smaller organizations, occupied the site and sat out a bitter winter in tents. Despite international attention, they were unable to stop the construction. The rebuilt road opened on 7 November 2002. MKAD has come closer to resembling a

freeway A controlled-access highway is a type of highway that has been designed for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow—ingress and egress—regulated. Common English terms are freeway, motorway, and expressway. Other similar terms ...

, due to the elimination of traffic lights, the prohibition of left turns at grade level, and the installation of streetlights along its entire route. It has a total of six lanes, a width of 29 meters, and a capacity of 85,000 vehicles per day. The road was designed to have a 120 km/h

speed limit Speed limits on road traffic, as used in most countries, set the legal maximum speed at which vehicles may travel on a given stretch of road. Speed limits are generally indicated on a traffic sign reflecting the maximum permitted speed, express ...

, though at present the limit is 90 km/h. This restriction is due to frequent accidents involving people crossing in undesignated places, despite the fact that there are more than 50 pedestrian crossings and barriers on both sides of the road designed to prevent pedestrian intrusion. There are three weight stations along the road. The roadway has implanted devices that measure surface condition,

dewpoint The dew point is the temperature the air needs to be cooled to (at constant pressure) in order to produce a relative humidity of 100%. This temperature depends on the pressure and water content of the air. When the air at a temperature above the ...

, wind speed and direction, visibility, air temperature and other parameters. This information is transmitted to the central office, where officials can decide whether to treat the road surface to prevent it from freezing. The devices also measure the speed and frequency of road traffic. There are also electronic signboards with information for motorists. Reconstruction required the laying of 680 tons of asphalt

concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of aggregate bound together with a fluid cement that cures to a solid over time. It is the second-most-used substance (after water), the most–widely used building material, and the most-manufactur ...

, the installation of 100 km of pedestrian barrier and 2.4 km of sound barrier, and the construction of 24 interchanges, 30 bridges and viaducts, 6 above-ground pedestrian crossings and 16 underground pedestrian crossings. As of 2006, the road was used by 50,000 vehicles a day. 93.4% of the vehicles were cars and vans, 5.8% were trucks and 0.8% were buses. Actual speeds were as follows: *below 70 km/h: 13.3% of vehicles *between 70 and 90 km/h: 53.4% *above 90 km/h: 33.3%

References

External links

Article and map about the highways around Minsk
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mkad (Minsk) Ring roads Roads in Belarus Transport in Minsk