The bridge faced with the growth of tourist traffic

With the beginning of the season, tourists rushed to the Crimea and got stuck in a traffic jam at the entrance to the Crimean bridge, which reached a length of 8 km on Sunday. Waiting for inspection lasts up to five hours. According to participants in the tourism market and experts, the problem is the tightened inspection procedure introduced after the explosion on the bridge, and the growth in tourist traffic, attracted by the relatively calm situation in Crimea and cheaper hotels. The issue of easing screening rules has been repeatedly raised by the tourism industry, but no solution has yet been found.

Over the weekend, a multi-kilometer traffic jam formed at the entrance from the Krasnodar Territory to Crimea along the Crimean Bridge. Its length ranges from 3 km in the morning to 8 km during peak hours. As of 20:00 on July 2, the Ministry of Transport of Crimea reported, the length of the traffic jam was 7 km, the waiting time for inspection was up to 4.5 hours.

As of May, the number of inspection points on both sides was 35 pieces on each side, the time for passing the inspection was about six minutes. On the morning of July 2, the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation increased the number of inspection posts: “In the morning, part of the workers was redistributed from the Crimean side to Krasnodar. With constantly arriving transport, the growth of the queue has been stopped at the moment. Inspection work is being optimized.”

The Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation explains the traffic jam by the increase in the number of cars arriving in Crimea and by the inspection of the transported luggage, in connection with which it recommends that travelers pack things in advance into bags that are convenient for unloading.

Tougher screening was introduced after the explosion of the Crimean bridge on October 8, 2022 (see “Kommersant” dated October 8). Today, 100% of cars entering the bridge are inspected. So, buses, minibuses, cars with bulky luggage pass through the scanner.

Passengers with light luggage leave the car and pass through the metal detector. The car is inspected manually: it is necessary to open the doors, hood, trunk, glove compartment, gas tank, spare wheel section, etc. Redirection to an x-ray is possible.

The queue to leave Crimea is noticeably shorter and disappears from time to time, although on June 28 the head of the Crimean Ministry of Transport, Nikolai Lukashenko, reported that due to heavy rainfall, the queue for the Crimean bridge from the Crimea reached 4 km, and the waiting time for inspection was up to two hours.

Then the rain stopped, and the scale of the traffic jam decreased – by 17:00 on July 2, it was 500 m long. By the beginning of the season on May 30, up to 7 thousand cars a day passed in both directions along the Crimean bridge, while at the peak of the season their number can reach 30 thousand, the head of the Crimea Sergey Aksenov reported in his Telegram channel.

The head of the Passenger Union, Kirill Yankov, recalls that this is the first tourist season since the introduction of total inspection on the Crimean bridge. Airplanes do not fly to Crimea, it is very difficult to buy a train ticket, and people travel in their own cars and buses. According to him, in June people went to Crimea less willingly, because many feared the offensive announced by Ukraine, and now it is clear that the successes of the Ukrainian army in the Crimean direction are not great. Due to the fact that few people traveled to the Crimea, prices fell there, Mr. Yankov notes, while in Sochi, where planes fly, they, on the contrary, increased, which stimulated the growth of the tourist flow. He was detained rebellion Evgeny Prigozhin and the closure of the M4 highway, but last week everyone went.

According to Mr. Yankov, in order to solve the problem, it is necessary either to facilitate inspection – for example, by making it selective – or to increase the number of inspection lanes, which is physically difficult to do, since new sections need to be paved and infrastructure needs to be created.

It is also possible to increase the number of trains, which is realistic, but the issue is the shortage of cars: they are supplied under a long-term contract between the Federal Passenger Company and the Tver Carriage Works, in which a fixed volume is set for each year and it is hardly possible to dramatically increase output. Also, says Mr. Yankov, water transport can be used, but for unclear reasons, the Prince Vladimir cruise ship will go from Sochi to Sukhum, and it is not involved in the Crimean message.

The problem with queues on the Crimean bridge has existed since the winter due to more thorough checks, reminds Kommersant’s interlocutor in the tourism market. According to him, before traffic jams were episodic and the waiting time in queues was no more than 2-2.5 hours. The current situation, the Kommersant source points out, did not come as a surprise to anyone in the tourism market.

“At meetings with the authorities, the issue was repeatedly discussed, but no solution was found,” says the interlocutor of Kommersant.

Sergey Romashkin, general director of the Dolphin tour operator, vice president of the Association of Tour Operators of Russia, believes that the cost of holidays in Crimean hotels this year is on average 20% lower than in the Krasnodar Territory. “Many tourists find it profitable to go to Crimea, and we see that the situation of last year is repeating itself – in June the flow was extremely limited, and in July it began to grow,” he explains. Mr. Romashkin doubts that traffic jams on the bridge will correct tourists’ plans. As he recalls, tourists traveled to the region by car in 2015, when long queues formed at the crossing, and the traffic situation in general was much worse.

According to Tvil.ru, the average cost of a night in Crimea decreased by 10% over the year, while in other directions, on the contrary, there is an increase in prices by 11% year-on-year. At the same time, the interlocutor of Kommersant in the tourism market indicates that tourists visiting the region get there mainly in their own cars.

Ilya Umansky, CEO of the Alean tour operator, president of the Russian Union of Tourism Industry, explains that the tourism industry has already raised the issue of queues on the Crimean bridge at the regional and Ministry of Economy levels. “Several times the decision was made to increase the throughput, in general the situation is improving,” he notes. According to Mr. Umansky, some tourists react emotionally to the queues, since the road to the Crimea is considered quite tiring even without them. But he believes that in the future this effect will be offset by reducing the time in line, informing travelers in advance, providing conditions for more comfortable waiting by installing toilets, etc.

Natalia Skorlygina, Alexandra Mertsalova