The Moscow traffic police began issuing license plates bearing the new 977 regional code, a development noted by socialbites.ca as part of ongoing updates in the city’s plate allocation system. One of the earliest vehicles to receive such a regional identifier was a Toyota RAV4, photographed by motorists and later shared on the Nomerogram service, which is an extension of the Drom.ru platform that tracks the performance and history of used cars through crowd-sourced data and official records. This particular photo captures a fresh model year RAV4, newly registered with the traffic authority, signaling a shift in how regional codes are rolled out in the capital city. The owner, a resident of Moscow, was among the first to obtain a number featuring the 977 code, marking a notable milestone in the incremental expansion of regional identifiers within the city’s license plate system. Previously, three-digit numbers in Moscow typically started with 1 or 7, reflecting the long-standing encoding conventions used in the region before the introduction of newer codes.
As of today, Moscow employs a broader set of regional codes, including 77, 97, 99, 177, 197, 199, 777, 797, and 799, a roster that had been anticipated and discussed by local observers toward the end of the previous year. This diversification aids in distributing the growing vehicle fleet across a wider range of numerical prefixes, reducing congestion in the most common sequences and offering more flexibility for future registrations. The city’s ongoing vehicle growth has long outpaced the availability of classic regional codes, so the new 977 series represents a natural progression in the system’s evolution. While the capital traditionally did not display the entire spectrum of Russian regional plates, the expansion reflects the practical need to accommodate an ever-increasing number of registered vehicles in a large urban environment. The adoption of additional three-digit combinations also helps authorities streamline processing and tracking while still preserving recognizable elements of the region-based coding scheme that residents and officials rely on for quick visual identification.