MKAD is the name of the beltway that goes around Minsk

Minsk

- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...

, Belarus

Belarus

Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...

. The name is an abbreviation that means Minsk BeltWay (Russian: Минская кольцевая автомобильная дорога). The 56.2 km road straddles the Minsk city limits

City limits

The terms city limits and city boundary refer to the defined boundary or border of a city. The area within the city limits is sometimes called the city proper. The terms town limits/boundary and village limits/boundary mean the same as city limits/boundary, but apply to towns and villages...

.

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 and bus

Bus

A bus is a road vehicle designed to carry passengers. Buses can have a capacity as high as 300 passengers. The most common type of bus is the single-decker bus, with larger loads carried by double-decker buses and articulated buses, and smaller loads carried by midibuses and minibuses; coaches are...

 stops. Thus, on August 7, 2001, president Alexander Lukashenko

Alexander Lukashenko

Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko has been serving as the President of Belarus since 20 July 1994. Before his career as a politician, Lukashenko worked as director of a state-owned agricultural farm. Under Lukashenko's rule, Belarus has come to be viewed as a state whose conduct is out of line...

 ordered its reconstruction, with the completion due by November 2002.

The rebuilt road opened on November 7, 2002. MKAD has come closer to resembling a freeway, 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 limit

Road speed limits are used in most countries to regulate the speed of road vehicles. Speed limits may define maximum , minimum or no speed limit and are normally indicated using a traffic sign...

, 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, 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

Concrete is a composite construction material, composed of cement and other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate , water and chemical admixtures.The word concrete comes from the Latin word...

, the installation of 100 km of pedestrian barrier and 2.4 km of sound barrier, and the construction of 24 interchanges

Interchange (road)

In the field of road transport, an interchange is a road junction that typically uses grade separation, and one or more ramps, to permit traffic on at least one highway to pass through the junction without directly crossing any other traffic stream. It differs from a standard intersection, at which...

, 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
• below 90 km/h: 53.4%
• above 90 km/h: 33.3%