The high-speed highways proposed by Putin will cost 10.8 trillion rubles

The projects of four high-speed highways (HSM), the creation of which was discussed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, are estimated at 10.8 trillion rubles. The estimated passenger traffic will be 64.7 million people per year. About it reported Kommersant with reference to the presentation of the infrastructure development strategy until 2030.

According to the publication, the creation of a Moscow-St. Petersburg high-speed railway will require 1.7 trillion rubles. excluding the cost of entrance to the capitals. The Moscow – Voronezh – Rostov-on-Don – Adler high-speed railway is estimated at 3.2 trillion rubles, the highway will reduce the travel time between end points by three times, to 7 hours 50 minutes. The HSR Moscow – Nizhny Novgorod – Kazan – Yekaterinburg could cost 4 trillion rubles: the route between the end points will be reduced to 6 hours 36 minutes (3.6 times). Moscow – Smolensk – Minsk – 1.9 trillion rubles, it will be possible to get from one capital to another in 3 hours 4 minutes (2.3 times faster).

The cost (in 2030 prices) is estimated on the basis of 1 km of the Moscow-St. Petersburg high-speed railway, that is, it is 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.

For the road to Adler, the expected passenger traffic will be 17.2 million passengers per year, to Ekaterinburg – 21.1 million, to Minsk – 3.8 million.

With reference to the head of the Union of Passengers, Kirill Yankov, Kommersant clarifies that high-speed trains can compete with aviation at distances of up to 5-5.5 hours, that is, routes to Adler and Yekaterinburg do not fall under these conditions. He also explained that there are few populated areas on the section from Voronezh to Rostov-on-Don, and passengers may prefer to fly to Rostov and Krasnodar. The road to the east, according to 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 there are already few large settlements before Yekaterinburg. Yankov also believes that the passenger flow of the highway to Minsk is insufficient to justify the construction of the high-speed railway.

The document reports that extending the comprehensive program for modernizing public transport until 2030 will require an additional at least 15 billion rubles. per year from the budget and 50 billion rubles. per year of repayable treasury loans. This will allow updating about 50 thousand transport units. Another 194.5 billion rubles. from the National Welfare Fund they propose to use it for the development of urban electric trains. It is also planned to restore the budgetary funds sequestered in 2025–2026 for the infrastructure of airports and seaports in the amount of 82.3 billion and 68.2 billion rubles. respectively.

On the need to create new high-speed highways Putin stated during a speech at the opening of traffic on the MCD-3 line on August 17. Then the president offered to work on the issue of constructing a high-speed railway from Moscow to Adler, Donetsk and Lugansk. To design a high-speed railway from Moscow to St. Petersburg he instructed back in the spring of 2019