This traffic light has been standing for more than a year without any traffic

Activists from the All-Russia People's Front (ONF), a social movement launched in 2011 by Vladimir Putin, have discovered a curiously uncompleted road in the city of Yaroslavl, complete with a fully functioning traffic light. ONF, which Putin created as prime minister to expand his political base beyond the political party United Russia, says it stumbled onto the spectacle of government inefficiency while making rounds throughout the city to monitor the state of the local roads.

As it turns out, Russian blogger Ilya Varlamov already discovered and photographed the same lonely traffic light more than four months ago in a special report on infrastructural problems in Yaroslavl. In March, when Varlamov posted his photograph of the unfinished road and functioning traffic light, he said the road construction had been abandoned since at least the previous summer, meaning that the object has been directing nonexistent traffic for more than a year now.

According to the ONF's activists in Yaroslavl, the average traffic light in the city costs roughly 2 million rubles [$31,000] to install. The fact that the light is operating normally means that the city has also been paying to keep it running for the past year. The group says it has appealed to the mayor's office to find out how much exactly the traffic light is costing the city, and what officials' plans are for the future.

Tatiana Borodina, one of the ONF's regional officials, says the road meant for the Yaroslavl intersection wasn't built because the funding ran out, though the local news website Yarnovosti.com says a litigation dispute between the city council and mayor's office is responsible for delaying the hiring of construction workers.

Igor Shoronov, a Yaroslavl city official, later acknowledged that the traffic light is turned on and consuming electricity (albeit it an insignificant amount, he says). He says it makes it harder for thieves to steal it.