In Sevastopol they returned to the issue of building a tunnel under the bay

According to the general plan of Sevastopol, which was presented at a meeting of the Urban Planning Council, a tunnel will be built under the Sevastopol Bay that will connect the Northern and Southern parts of the city. The entrance will be located in the center, at the intersection of Pozharova Street and Streletsky Spusk, and the exit to the surface will be on Bogdanova Street in the northern part of the city.

The tunnel will be more than 25 meters deep. During her presentation of the draft master plan, the head of the transport systems planning workshop, Natalya Karmadonova, called the starting point of the tunnel unique, since there is a significant difference in the relief, which makes it possible to organize the entrance to the tunnel. And at the supposed exit from the tunnel, on the contrary, there is “free territory.”

It is not yet possible to say for sure that this project will be implemented. Only the first presentation of the master plan took place. Next – a meeting with a special working group, public discussions, coordination with federal executive authorities. The general plan will be finally approved in 2024.

The question of how to connect the two sides of the city has been under development for a long time, and this is a pressing problem for the residents of Sevastopol. Indeed, now, to get from the city center to its northern part, you either need to take a 28-kilometer road detour or take a sea ferry.

The first option takes an hour, the second – only 6 minutes, but boats and ferries leave at intervals of 20 minutes. In addition, in the event of a storm warning, shipping is temporarily suspended. According to experts, the construction of a tunnel or bridge could reduce travel time from one bank to the other to 10-15 minutes.

Then why hasn’t the bridge or tunnel been built yet? They have wanted to do this since the times of the Soviet Union. Then the construction of the tunnel was included in the general plan of Sevastopol in 1983, but it did not come to fruition. During the period when Crimea was Ukrainian, there was also talk about this. The construction was included in the Ukrainian general plan for 2005. The cost was estimated at $30 million. But the matter did not move forward.

This was discussed again after the annexation of Crimea to Russia in 2014. Then Alexey Chaly proposed to build a cable car. The project was estimated at 500 million rubles and it was understood that it would be implemented at the expense of investors, but there were no people willing to invest in the cable car.

In the same year, representatives of the city’s transport enterprises, at a meeting with Deputy Minister of Transport of the Russian Federation Nikolai Asaul, proposed building a bridge 750 meters long.

In September 2017, at a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, the newly elected governor of Sevastopol, Dmitry Ovsyannikov, proposed resuming the project to connect the southern and northern parts of the city using a tunnel. The President supported this initiative.

After this, several organizations expressed their desire to take part in the project. The USK-MOST company, responsible for the construction of the bridge across the Eastern Bosphorus in Vladivostok, won the tender to carry out the work. True, after some time she refused the tender she won. The official reason for the refusal was sanctions.

After this, a second competition was announced. True, whether there was a winner is unknown. But then the cost of the work was estimated at 28 million.

It’s difficult to say how much the new project will cost. And in 2019, the implementation was again shelved. “We need to approach this project after we implement what is currently burning in our country and has a much greater impact on everyday life. Now we need to bring to fruition what we started, or what we couldn’t start,” explained Acting Governor of Sevastopol Mikhail Razvozhaev.

In 2022, they decided to build a bridge. Such a project was included in the program “Development of transport and road infrastructure of the city of Sevastopol.” According to preliminary data, the cost of the bridge will be 63 billion 399 million rubles. Construction is planned for 2026-2030.

Experts note that there are several difficulties in the construction of the tunnel. Firstly, there is a lot of silt at the bottom of the bay – a layer of about 15 meters. And they still find mines left there since the Second World War. Secondly, the price. The cost of such a project may turn out to be much higher than the 28 million named in 2018, and it is not at all a fact that the cost will pay off, since Sevastopol does not have a very large population – approximately 550 thousand.

Thirdly, it is necessary that the entrances to the tunnel fit organically into the architectural ensemble of the city. It is also necessary to think about transport connections: will the construction of a tunnel cause large traffic jams right in the center? In general, all experts agree on one thing – this is a very complex project that requires painstaking development.

What fate this project will have is not yet clear. Many residents of Sevastopol are inclined to believe that these are again empty promises: “For several times now, news has surfaced about a bridge or a tunnel, but it does not lead to anything further.” We will find out the result in 2024.