The
urban infrastructure in Ulaanbaatar is bursting at the seams. Cars in the city
center can move only at 10 km per hour; every day, over 160,000 people —
elders, students, policemen, and handicapped — use public transportation free
of charge or pay subsidized rates. Entire areas from the countryside have
migrated but they have not brought their schools and hospitals with them.
Ulaanbaatar desperately needs to add to its 111 kindergartens and 44 secondary
schools, to build underground subways, to dig a tunnel in the Bogd Mountain, to
construct bridges.

It
is not just lack of money that stands in the way of progress. There is a sad
lack of political will also to press forward with urgent projects that might
cause temporary discontent among people. That is why nothing is heard of
already announced plans to change driving regulations, impose parking fees,
building more underground parking areas, banning burning of coal in the city,
moving some education institutes to Nalaikh, extending pavements, building a
flyover for cars to cross the railway track, and a host of others.