The government will consider transport corridors to China until 2025

The government included in the development plan for Siberia the creation of the North Siberian Railway, the route to China through Altai, the resumption of construction of the Kyzyl-Kuragino railway and the corridors being built from it to China through Mongolia. However, all these projects appear in the document in the subjunctive mood – it is proposed to evaluate their feasibility or present plans. According to experts, all roads to China are now needed and they should be developed correctly, while Sevsib is needed to relieve the western sections of the Eastern Test Site and access the Northern Sea Route.

The government, according to its website, approved the plan for implementing the strategy for the socio-economic development of the Siberian Federal District until 2035. The plan includes, in particular, a number of large projects for the development of railway infrastructure, but the most large-scale of them are in the distant future.

Thus, by 2025 it is planned to complete an assessment of the feasibility of creating the North Siberian Railway. At the beginning of October, President Vladimir Putin instructed the government, together with the leadership of Kuzbass, the Russian Academy of Sciences and JSC Russian Railways, to consider the possibility of its construction. The project has been in existence for many years; it previously envisaged the construction of the Nizhnevartovsk-Bely Yar-Ust-Ilimsk section in order to serve the industrial zone of the Lower Angara region and as an alternative route for part of the sections of the BAM and Trans-Siberian Railway. The cost of the 1.9 thousand km long route was estimated at 218 billion rubles. Presidential aide Igor Levitin reported in early October that the purpose of Sevsib was to connect the Eastern training ground with the Northern Sea Route.

At the same time, the plan approved by the government indicates two options – it is unclear whether they are mutually exclusive or complementary: Nizhnevartovsk-Bely Yar and Tashtagol-Urumqi (PRC).

The second route, judging by the end points, is a road through a small section of the Russian-Chinese border between Kazakhstan and Mongolia: the Altai Republic directly borders the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China. Construction there is complicated by the complex landscape, which requires the construction of tunnels or the construction of overpasses, as well as the need to cross the Ukok Natural Park, which occupies the entire area between the borders (see “Kommersant” dated April 7, 2021).

Also, in terms of assessing the feasibility, the plan mentions the frozen project for the construction of the Kyzyl-Kuragino railway. The assessment, according to the document, should be completed in 2026. To implement the Kyzyl-Kuragino railway project with a length of 410 km and a cost of 192.4 billion rubles, which was supposed to connect the Elegest coal deposit to the railway network, a concession agreement for a period of 30 years had already been concluded with Ruslan Baysarov’s Kyzyl-Kuragino TEPK ( from October 2018 to December 2048), but was suspended for five years in 2021 (see “Kommersant” dated April 1, 2021).

In turn, the Kyzyl-Kuragino branch is seen as part of two trans-Mongolian corridors to China indicated in the plan – the northern one (Kyzyl-Kuragino to the border with Mongolia, then through Mongolia to the Erlian-Zamyn-Uud border crossing with China and further to Beijing and Tianjin) and western (with exit from Mongolia to China in the Hami region with an end point in Urumqi). Relevant proposals should be prepared in 2024.

The country needs Sevsib, says President of the National Research Center for Transportation and Infrastructure Pavel Ivankin: first of all, because it can relieve congestion on the West Siberian and Krasnoyarsk railways and create a backup for the busy section from Mariinsk to Taishet.

Also, in combination with the Northern Latitudinal Railway (NSH), it provides access to the Northern Sea Route, which will also relieve congestion at the Central Transport Hub. He estimates the construction of Sevsib at 500–550 billion rubles, but the price greatly depends on artificial structures: “As we know from the Northern Highway, one bridge over one river can jeopardize the entire project, and there are several of these bridges on Sevsib.” As for the section through Altai, according to the expert, it should be considered rather for the future. But it is good that all these projects are included in the development plan, since all possible routes to China are needed – both the route through Altai and the corridors through Mongolia to the PRC, and their inclusion in the document will allow us to begin developing pre-project documentation and routing calculations. However, a Kommersant source close to the government is confident that there is no budget money for Sevsib, as well as for other large railway projects in the region, and is not expected.

Natalya Skorlygina