There is such a concession – to accelerate the homeland – Newspaper Kommersant No. 30 (7475) of 02/17/2023

The Sinara Group may become the concessionaire of the Moscow-Petersburg High-Speed ​​Railroad (HSR), documents for filing an application with the government have already been prepared. Initially, it was assumed that Siemens would become a technology partner in the project, now it has been replaced by Ural Locomotives (the former joint venture of Siemens with Sinara), which by 2028 should develop a train with a speed of 400 km / h. Analysts believe that Sinara has enough competencies, and it does not make sense to invite foreigners to concessionaires now.

The Sinara group may become the concessionaire of the main section of the Moscow-Petersburg high-speed highway (previously controlled by Dmitry Pumpyansky, in March 2022 he ceased to be its beneficiary). As follows from the documents of Russian Railways seen by Kommersant, the monopoly, together with the proposed concessionaire, on the basis of the Sinara group’s appeal to the government dated July 13, 2022, is working on an organizational and legal model of interaction between participants in the concession initiative, “reflecting the distribution of the financial burden and arising obligations between all key participants in the process. A package of documents has been agreed to submit to the government an application for a private concession initiative to organize the construction and operation of the highway, the document says.

The project of the Russian high-speed line has been developed for decades, in 2019, from the original Moscow-Kazan version, it was decided to reconfigure it into the Moscow-Petersburg route (see Kommersant from March 28 And April 16 2019). The project assumes reaching the communication time between the capitals at 2 hours 15 minutes.

It is assumed that the entrances to Moscow and St. Petersburg (sections Moscow-Kryukovo and Obukhovo-Petersburg) will be built at the expense of the investment program of Russian Railways and the budget, while the main length of the route – the Kryukovo-Obukhovo section with a length of 624.2 km – should be given to concession.

The cost of this site is estimated at 1.66 trillion rubles.

The concession partnership directly depends on the technological one – who exactly will supply the rolling stock for the highway and, accordingly, for what technical needs the route will be designed. For the Moscow-Petersburg route, Siemens was the most likely partner before. However, the German company in May 2022 decided to permanently leave Russia (see Kommersant from 9th of March And 12 May 2022). Siemens had a joint venture with Sinara – Ural Locomotives, which assembled, in particular, Lastochka. At the end of 2022, it was announced that the almost complete localization of Lastochka would be achieved in 2023.

In 2020, Russian Railways, Sinara, Ural Locomotives and Siemens agreed to design a train for high-speed lines. In the documents of JSC Russian Railways, it is reported that as part of the implementation of the presidential order of June 21, 2022 on the creation and commissioning of a Russian high-speed electric train in 2028, the development of design documentation by JSC Railway Engineering Center and work on concluding a contract with the Sinara group » for the purchase of a prototype train for operation on high-speed lines.

Ural Locomotives, according to the head of the board of directors of Sinara-Transport Machines Alexander Misharin, will modernize production by 2025 in order to produce a train with a speed of 400 km/h by 2028.

Sinar and Russian Railways declined to comment.

As a potential concessionaire, Sinara has a number of advantages, says Mikhail Burmistrov, head of Infoline-Analytics. The group has not only a highly localized Lastochka, but also a project of a completely domestic high-speed passenger electric train that is ready for certification, which can replace the Lastochka, a successful experience of a tram concession in Taganrog, a trolleybus concession in Chelyabinsk, a large own construction and development and financial business , and the scale of the group is sufficient to implement even such a super-large project. It is interesting, the expert asks, what is the position of Transmashholding (TMH), which could also be interested in such a project (Kommersant did not give comments at TMH). The search for a partner for this project among Russian companies, and not the involvement of his partner, according to Mr. Burmistrov, is certainly justified from the point of view of a synergistic effect for the economy.

Natalya Skorlygina