| Less than a month has passed since Vladimir Yakovlev works as the presidential envoy in the Southern Federal District, and the former St. Petersburg governor has already found a project that claims to be the “construction project of the century.” Let us recall that large-scale construction projects accompanied all of Mr. Yakovlev’s activities in St. Petersburg, and they, in turn, were invariably accompanied by scandals. Yesterday, at a meeting with the leadership of the North Caucasus Railway (NCR), in concerns about how to increase freight traffic in the south of the country, Mr. Yakovlev warmly supported the idea of moving the Tuapse-Adler section of the road from the coast to the mountains.
This project is still being worked out by North Caucasus Railways. According to preliminary estimates by the Giprotrans Research Institute, moving 103 km of railway track from the Black Sea coastline beyond the mountains will cost 45-46 billion rubles. And although, as the head of SKZD Vladimir Vorobyov admitted, many in the management of Russian Railways are skeptical about this idea, Mr. Yakovlev is confident that the project is extremely relevant and only with its implementation will it be possible to talk about the full development of the Black Sea resorts of the Krasnodar Territory. Mr. Yakovlev is convinced that as long as “investors are shown a railway a few meters from the beach and concrete blocks in the sea, they will not come to us.” At the same time, the plenipotentiary has no doubt that money for moving the road can be found at the expense of those who will develop the 103 km of beaches freed from the railway track. In addition to resort businessmen, money for the project, in his opinion, can also be received from companies that will locate production along the new “zagorny” railway line. SKZD has a more down-to-earth position: according to Vladimir Vorobyov, the project can be largely financed by Russian Railways itself, since the new road will allow more cargo to be carried.
The chief engineer of the North Caucasus Railway, Igor Ilyukhin, describes the current state of the Tuapse-Adler section, built almost 80 years ago: “Periodically, during a storm or the fall of some stone, traffic on this section now stops. In 1914, the middle strip of protective beaches separating the road from the sea , was 34 m, by 2000 it had decreased to 1.5 m, and in some places it was even zero with a norm of 25 m." In Soviet times, hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of rock were literally thrown into the fight against the sea every year, but since the mid-1990s, no money has been allocated for this. Although a concrete barrier wall built in the sea protects the railway track, it disfigures the appearance of the coast and disrupts the coastal ecology.
Three routes for the future line are being considered, and two of them should pass through the Krasnaya Polyana resort. Vladimir Yakovlev yesterday strongly recommended that railway workers consult with scientists, environmentalists and “not to burden Krasnaya Polyana with the railway after all.” Therefore, most likely, preference will be given to the route that will pass 6-15 km from the sea coastline and extend the road from Tuapse to Adler by 11 km. The new line will allow railway workers to revive Soviet transit flows of goods that went along the North Caucasus Railway to Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, just as grain now went through Chechnya to Dagestan and further along the Caspian Sea to Iran. True, in order to resume railway communication with Georgia, according to Vladimir Yakovlev, additional political efforts will still be required.
The plenipotentiary intends to continue the topic of moving the railway beyond the mountains in June in Sochi together with the head of Russian Railways Gennady Fadeev and businessmen interested in the project. Perhaps by that time the project will become part of the program for the development of the Russian resort complex, which is now being prepared by the Governor of the Krasnodar Territory, Alexander Tkachev, within the framework of the State Council. At least Plenipotentiary Representative Yakovlev hopes so.
All these plans have one big drawback. All the “constructions of the century” that were carried out under the patronage of Mr. Yakovlev - the ring road in St. Petersburg, the dam in the Gulf of Finland and the restoration of the flooded metro line - remained unbuilt and, moreover, are clearly associated in the minds of the average person with “non-target spending of budget funds." About 45 billion rubles need to be invested in the eastern half-ring of the Ring Road alone, and the total cost of the dam is approaching $1 billion. At first it was said that the eastern half-ring, construction of which began in 1998, would be completed by the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg, then the deadlines shifted to 2005, now they are already talking about 2007-2008. The dam, without which St. Petersburg faces a devastating flood, has been promised to be built “in the coming years” since the 1980s, but the city has long stopped believing these assurances. In 2000, strikes broke out during the construction of the dam. In 2002, Yakovlev's former colleagues at Smolny - Alexei Kudrin and German Gref - directly accused the governor of his inability to complete the construction. In the fall of 2002, the President's Main Control Department found out that the construction deadlines for the ring road were missed due to the involvement of bad contractors and unsatisfactory preparation of tender and design documentation, as well as confusion with the organization of financing. In January last year, the findings of the State Property Committee were confirmed - the St. Petersburg prosecutor's office established that one of the companies, using fictitious documents provided during the tender, stole 4.5 million rubles. And in December 2003, by decision of the Ministry of Natural Resources, both construction projects - the ring road and the dam - were temporarily frozen. Igor BURAKOV, Rostov-on-Don, Victor MATVEEV, St. Petersburg
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