The creation of four high-speed highways will require almost 11 trillion rubles

Kommersant found out how much the high-speed highway projects proposed in August by Vladimir Putin could cost. The government estimated four roads, including the pilot Moscow-St. Petersburg high-speed railway, but without the routes to Lugansk and Donetsk mentioned by the president, at 10.8 trillion rubles. The total passenger traffic should be 64.7 million people per year. However, experts believe that the Moscow-Minsk high-speed railway, with a planned passenger flow of 3.8 million people, is unviable, and the highways to Adler and Yekaterinburg will lose out to air transport.

The high-speed highway network, approved in principle by the president in August, will cost about 10.8 trillion rubles. Such calculations are contained in the presentation of the infrastructure development strategy until 2030, which Kommersant saw (the office of the relevant Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin declined to comment).

According to the document, in addition to the previously announced estimate of investments in the Moscow-St. Petersburg high-speed railway (1.7 trillion rubles, excluding the cost of entrances to the capitals), the Moscow-Voronezh-Rostov-on-Don-Adler high-speed railway is estimated at 3.2 trillion rubles, it allows you to reduce the speed of movement between end points by three times, to 7 hours 50 minutes. The Moscow-Nizhny Novgorod-Kazan-Ekaterinburg high-speed line is estimated at 4 trillion rubles. (3.6 times faster, up to 6 hours 36 minutes), and Moscow-Smolensk-Minsk – 1.9 trillion rubles. (2.3 times, up to 3 hours 4 minutes).

Calculations for the extension of highways to new territories indicated by the president are not provided. However, cost estimates (in 2030 prices) are based on the cost of 1 km of the Moscow-St. Petersburg high-speed railway, that is, they are not accurate. In total, 4.37 thousand km of high-speed lines should provide an increase in budget revenues by 15.1 trillion rubles. and GDP by 35.2 trillion rubles, follows from the presentation.

HSR in Russia has been discussed in different versions for decades. Plans were being refined all the time. So, in 2019, from the Moscow-Kazan option, it was decided to reconfigure the project into the Moscow-St. Petersburg route (see Kommersant on March 28 and April 16, 2019). It assumes reaching a communication time between capitals of 2 hours 15 minutes. The end of construction is scheduled for 2028. On August 17, Vladimir Putin outlined other highways: the high-speed railway from Moscow to Adler, from Moscow through Kazan to the Urals, as well as the possible construction of the high-speed railway to Minsk and to Lugansk and Donetsk (see Kommersant on August 17).

The materials of the infrastructure strategy calculate the passenger flow on the new high-speed lines. For the road to Adler it should be 17.2 million passengers per year, for Yekaterinburg – 21.1 million and for Minsk – 3.8 million. The head of the Union of Passengers, Kirill Yankov, says that, according to research, high-speed lines are competitive with aviation at intervals up to 5–5.5 hours. Thus, the routes to Adler and Yekaterinburg no longer fall under these conditions. As for the passenger flow between intermediate stations on the HSR to Adler, there are few populated areas on the section from Voronezh to the Rostov agglomeration, and to Rostov and Krasnodar passengers may already prefer to fly. The road to the east, according to Mr. Yankov, should end in the Naberezhnye Chelny-Nizhnekamsk-Elabuga agglomeration, since passenger traffic between Kazan and these cities will be quite comparable to that expected between Moscow and Kazan, and further east to Yekaterinburg there are already few large populated areas points.

As for the road to Minsk, the forecasts of passenger traffic indicated in the presentation coincide with the forecasts of Mr. Yankov, and it is clearly insufficient to justify the construction of a high-speed railway. Previously, the expert recalls, it was planned to extend this road to Europe, but this, on the one hand, should wait until the next geopolitical cycle, and on the other hand, at a distance to both Warsaw and Berlin, aviation is already preferable.

The presentation also indicates allocations for the development of urban transport. In particular, it is planned to extend the comprehensive program for the modernization of public transport until 2030 in accordance with instructions following the results of the State Council on Transport, which will require an additional at least 15 billion rubles. per year from the budget plus repayable treasury loans in the amount of 50 billion rubles. in year. This will allow updating about 50 thousand units of rolling stock, the document reports. Also 194.5 billion rubles. It is proposed to allocate from the National Welfare Fund for the development of urban electric trains. It is also planned to restore budget funds sequestered in 2025–2026 from airport infrastructure and seaport infrastructure in the amount of 82.3 billion and 68.2 billion rubles. respectively.

Natalya Skorlygina