The paths went around – Kommersant

Two new toll roads, allowing motorists to get to the Black Sea faster, will open in June 2023 – the Aksai bypass and the Far Western Krasnodar bypass as part of the M-4 highway. The launch of the movement was announced by the head of the state company Avtodor Vyacheslav Petushenko. He also promised to put into operation by the end of the year the remaining sections of the M-12 Vostok highway to Kazan and announced a number of new projects, including the Ring Road-2 in St. Petersburg, the Orekhovo-Zuevo bypass, the Meridian highway and the South-West for which, however, money has yet to be found.

Two new sections of the M-4 in southern Russia will be opened in June, Vyacheslav Petushenko said yesterday at a meeting with Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. The first object is the eastern bypass of Rostov-on-Don, a 35-kilometer highway without traffic lights and intersections, bypassing the city of Aksai. The second section is the 51-kilometer Far Western Bypass of Krasnodar (DZOK), which will divert vehicles from the capital of Kuban and take them to a new high-speed road towards Crimea (built by Rosavtodor, will be ready in 2024). The total savings in travel time from bypassing Aksai and SASC, according to Avtodor, will be three to four hours when driving from Moscow to Crimea. The press service of the government yesterday cited Mr. Petushenko’s promise to open both sections on June 10. The Avtodor state company specified that this would happen in June “by the peak of the summer season” – without a specific date. Both sites will be paid, tariffs have not yet been named.

The further fate of the M-12 Vostok highway was also discussed. Now, we recall, three of its sections are open in the Moscow and Vladimir regions. On September 9, Vyacheslav Petushenko said, traffic will be opened in several more sections, as a result, it will be possible to drive without stops and traffic lights from Moscow to Arzamas, at the end of December – to Kazan (more precisely, to the village of Shali, located 35 km from the city). Drivers leaving Moscow, by the way, will get on the M-12 not directly from the Moscow Ring Road, but 8 km from it – through the Moscow High-Speed ​​Diameter, which the Moscow City Hall promises to seamlessly connect to the toll highway in Nekrasovka. Travel time from Moscow to Kazan after the opening of the M-12, according to Vyacheslav Petushenko, will be reduced from 13 to 6.5 hours.

Mikhail Mishustin, in a conversation with the head of Avtodor, recalled the instruction to resolve issues with the infrastructure along the M-12: “Try to make sure that related communications and all services that are necessary for maintenance work at the proper level.” This problem, we recall, was discussed several years ago after the launch of the M-11 Neva highway, when motorists complained about the lack of gas stations and sometimes even got up on the highway with an empty tank. “We have worked on the bugs, the comments of users that were after the construction of the M-11 were taken into account,” said Vyacheslav Petushenko. He assured that the places for gas stations on the M-12 were included in the road project in advance. Now, on the Moscow region section of the highway, there are two gas stations (opposite each other) with a cafe, a parking lot and a recreation area (the so-called multifunctional zones). Avtodor promises to open 14 more zones on M-12 in 2023, and 16 more in 2024. On M-11, the problem, apparently, remains relevant even now: the other day, the Blue Buckets community once again appeared photos of queues of cars standing at gas stations on the highway.

Vyacheslav Petushenko told the prime minister about the promising projects of the state-owned company. He mentioned five projects with a total cost of 300 billion rubles, for which design estimates have been prepared. According to Kommersant, we are talking about the reconstruction of sections of the highways M-1 “Belarus” 66-84th kilometer, M-1 “Ukraine” 65-124th kilometer, the construction of the Orekhovo-Zuevo bypass in the Moscow region, the Pulkovo interchange on M -11 and KAD-2 in St. Petersburg. There is partial funding from the budget for these projects, Mr. Petushenko assured the prime minister. “Today, together with the largest banks that have a need to invest in road construction, we are working out mechanisms for raising funds in order to start implementing these projects earlier,” he said. “Together with the Ministry of Finance, the Federation Council, and the State Duma, we are considering the possibility of subsidizing.” Vyacheslav Petushenko also mentioned two “mega-projects” that have been discussed for several years – the Meridian highway (1.4 thousand km, will run from the border of Kazakhstan to Belarus) and the South-Western Chord highway (1.15 thousand km , will connect Yekaterinburg, Samara and Krasnodar). “Of course, the largest borrowers are needed there,” Vyacheslav Petushenko said. “We are considering, among other things, the issue of attracting investments in this project from China.” On one chord, according to preliminary estimates, you need about 1 trillion rubles.

All the mentioned projects are contained in the government’s road plan until 2027, but so far the money has been allocated only for design. The situation, however, may change, Mikhail Mishustin hinted: “There are projects in the plan, the implementation of which can be significantly accelerated.” “Here it is important to use all the tools that the state-owned company has to accelerate the promotion of all projects,” the head of government added.

Avtodor has a number of other projects that were not discussed at the meeting with the prime minister, in particular, the construction of a bypass of Tver as part of M-11 (it is already under construction and will be partially opened in 2023), the extension of M-12 from Kazan to Yekaterinburg (construction has already is underway, should be completed in 2024), as well as the project of the route from Dzhugba to Sochi, including the bypass of Adler (now engineering and survey work is underway there).

There is a pool of experienced banks, investors and contractors on the market who love and know how to work with roads, says Andrey Mironov, General Counsel of the National PPP Center. “At the same time, the macroeconomic situation is quite stable, both according to the forecasts of the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation and the World Bank,” the expert explained to Kommersant. “Although the sanctions have affected the construction and road industries, they do not hinder the implementation of projects. Therefore, the key issue for the creation of these roads with the involvement of private funds will be the traffic forecast, that is, the demand and relevance of the route. At the same time, the presence in the budget and the Avtodor State Company of its own funds in the future for partial co-financing of these projects will increase the chances of their successful implementation.”

Ivan Buranov