Opinion

A lot of European supporters while choosing the way of traveling for EURO 2012 matches to Ukraine and Poland for sure considered using private cars. It’s a good idea because such a variant has a row of advantages.

The main advantage is the almost complete independence regardless some exterior factors. If there is no matches in the city where you’ve accommodated you can always go sightseeing in the neighbor towns. Therefore, the national team played all its ties in Poland and qualified for final, it’s not a big deal, and you will easily go to cheer it up in Kiev. You won’t have even the slightest thought about buying tickets for trains, buses and airplanes, e.g. where and how much does it cost, how to be on time, or how return them…

So, today we’re going to talk Ukraine’s preparation and readiness to welcome fans in cars the next summer.

Readiness. According to the functionaries’ estimations EURO 2012 host cities, i.e. Kiev, Donetsk, Kharkov and Lviv, is 80% completed necessary and planned for championship holding roadworks. The main forces are applied to the reconstruction of the high-ways that lead to stadiums, ring roads, airports and city’s entrances.

In particular, Kiev obtained one more bridge and interchanged near the old one for EURO 2012, therefore, the heavy traffic of the capital’s bridges should be diminished. In general, the Ukraine’s Government has allocated some 190 million euro for roadworks in the EURO 2012 host cities. It’s a budget of some rather big city.

By the way, the inter town roads, which connect EURO 2012 host cities of Ukraine, is 90% completed. So these high ways that link host-cities already have been reconstructed according to the European standards, i.e. the road surface was changed, the traffic lane markings were drawn on, the majority of roads were amplified till 9 meters. Therefore, the fans will run between Kiev, Donetsk, Kharkov and Lviv at a constant speed of 110-120 km/per hour.

Security. The roads that connect EURO 2012 host cities will be equipped with special alarm buttons made in bright colors (perhaps yellow one) on the metal stands. So every kilometer of a high way will have such an emergency panel till the next year June. So, even the driver that doesn’t speak Ukrainian, Russian or English and his mobile phone doesn’t function, can call the police just by a simple pressing the button. Therefore, they would try to solve some problems by themselves or would address specialists.

Unfortunately, it isn’t settled yet the way of how the police will communicate with foreign car drivers because the attempt of teaching them to speak English doesn’t go well. The proposition of the police authorities to use volunteers-translators suits for stands, cities’ streets and train stations, however, it’s doubtful that it’s a suitable variant for roads of many kilometers. Thereby, law-enforcement agents will be equipped with electronic translators, and according to mass media, these gadgets will recognize the speech and will play 14 thousand the most frequent English and Russia phrases, and have a 1 million words data base.

Moreover, European tourists won’t experiment any difficulties with traffic rules and signs. In 2011 Ukrainian legislation was adjusted as much as possible to European norms that concern auto traffic. For example, Ukraine introduced principle of short-term registration of road accidents without police participation if the harm isn’t considerable.

Infrastructure. For EURO 2012 Kiev will obtain two big parking zones, other host cities will have one area. Furthermore, car drivers could accommodate in the camping center built for EURO 2012 purpose where they will take advantage of such services as shower, WC, shops, cafes, cybercafé and, of course, big screens for football matches broadcastings. Donetsk already announced an opening of such a camping.