| Moscow Railway will develop high-speed traffic The largest of the 17 branches of the Russian Railways, Moscow (Moscow Railways), which accounts for about half of all Russian passenger and commuter traffic, unveiled yesterday its top-priority investment projects. According to the head of the Moscow Railways, Vladimir Starostenko, the Moscow Railways intends to focus on organizing potentially cost-effective high-speed connections with large cities and airports near Moscow.
The head of the Moscow Railway is making plans based on the results of the Aeroexpress to Domodedovo Airport - a project worth 240 million rubles. started in August 2002. Travel time to the airport by rail has been reduced from 1.5 hours to 40 minutes; 6.5 thousand passengers use the Aeroexpress train per day. As a result, this project has already brought 90.9 million rubles to Moscow Railways. income. Its profitability last year was 43%, and now it reaches 89%.
Inspired by the experience of operating Aeroexpress trains, the Moscow Railways, together with the Moscow government, is rapidly organizing a similar line to Vnukovo Airport, which will be launched on August 1 of this year. The project cost the road 500 million rubles. It is expected that the services of the Moscow Railway, by analogy with the traffic at Domodedovo, will be used by about 20% of air passengers at Vnukovo Airport who want to get from the Kievsky railway station to the Airport station in 35 minutes. So the railway workers are confident in advance of the profitability of this project: the airport’s passenger traffic last year was 1.8 million people, and with the introduction of the Aeroexpress, according to Vnukovo specialists, it will grow to 5 million next year.
In addition, the Moscow Railways is already considering a project to extend the high-speed system from the Kievsky railway station to the Moscow City business center under construction on the basis of the monorail route being built. True, not even a feasibility study for this high-speed project is ready yet, but in the future, according to Mr. Starostenko, the route will connect the City not only with Vnukovo, but also with Sheremetyevo. But there is no detailed information on this project at all yet - the press service of the Moscow Railway says that it will be possible to leave for Sheremetyevo not from the Leningradsky station, as previously planned, but from the Kievsky one (since the Moscow government was unable to agree on the project with the Oktyabrskaya Railway, which owns the entire transport route Moscow - St. Petersburg).
By August 1 next year, Moscow Railways announces the launch of another obviously profitable project - a high-speed commuter line Moscow-Lyubertsy-Ramenskoye. Now, railway workers explain, passengers are not satisfied with the low speed. With the launch of this line, travel time will be reduced from 65 to 45 minutes. It is assumed that the project will cost 3.5 billion rubles. (of which 1.4 billion will go to the purchase of nine Sputnik electric trains) will increase the road’s revenues by 133.5 million rubles. per year. It is expected that these trains will carry about 22.4 thousand passengers per day (in total, 110 thousand people travel in this direction daily). By the way, a similar project for running Sputnik electric trains on the Moscow-Mytishchi section (launched last December) has now achieved a profitability of 22.3%.
In the future, according to Mr. Starostenko, the Moscow Railways intends to organize high-speed connections with all major centers of the Moscow region. First in line are Zheleznodorozhny and Chekhov. Yana VIKTOROVA |
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