| The President opened a tunnel on the most dangerous section of the road from Sochi to Krasnaya Polyana Last Friday, the longest automobile tunnel in the country was opened in Sochi - the latest construction of the now completely reconstructed highway connecting the coast with the high-mountain village of Krasnaya Polyana. Russian President Vladimir Putin took part in the opening ceremony of the tunnel.
We can say that since August 19, 2005, Krasnaya Polyana and the center of Sochi are connected by a completely new road. The old route, 56 km long, was built by Russian workers and Turkish prisoners of war back in the 19th century. The new road turned out to be 14 km shorter.
The tunnel was dug into the mountain to bypass the most dangerous section of the old highway, which the locals called “God Bring It On!” The narrow and winding roadway ran along a cornice carved into the rock. On one side there was a cliff, on the other there was a sheer wall from which stones were constantly falling onto the road. Having fallen from a 400-meter height, they pierced the cars right through. Every year people died here. The tunnel, as they hope in Sochi, will solve this problem forever. The road to Krasnaya Polyana has become safe, comfortable and fast.
The length of the tunnel is 2580 m. From the sea side it was pierced by specialists from Southern Mining Construction Company CJSC, from the mountains by Tunnel Detachment-44 LLC. Work began at the end of 1998; in August 2002, the tunnel collapsed, then funds ran out, and construction was frozen for more than two years. In 2004, funding resumed. The tunnel was being completed at an accelerated pace.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the tunnel, Vladimir Putin noted that the road to Krasnaya Polyana connects only five villages with a population of just over five thousand people to Sochi. But a tunnel was being built, which cost the state almost 3 billion rubles, of course, for the future - in the hope that the new road “will become a very important infrastructure link in the development of the region’s economy.” Now tourism and skiing can develop here in a fundamentally new way, the president emphasized.
At the end of his short speech, Vladimir Putin drew the attention of the leaders of the Russian Ministry of Transport present at this ceremony to the fact that there are other long-term construction projects in the country that can be classified as infrastructure projects as important as the Krasnopolyansky tunnel: 12 bridges, the construction of which is already underway 20 years, Moscow-Don and Chita-Khabarovsk highways. According to the president, their construction should be completed in the next three years.
Sochi residents were especially delighted by Vladimir Putin's words about the need to complete the construction of a bypass road around the center of the resort by 2010, which is already choking from traffic jams that constantly form in key places.
Those who came to the tunnel opening ceremony were impressed by the way the president arrived at the site of the celebrations. Everything took place at the portal from the side of the mountains, and the crowd expected that the presidential motorcade, composed, as usual, of black limousines, would fly out of the tunnel. But at about five o’clock in the evening (and people had been waiting since two o’clock in the afternoon), an old, 1956, but well-restored Volga GAZ-21 with registration number P001ВВ.99 rus quietly emerged from the tunnel. The driver got out of the car, and everyone saw that it was... Putin!
The Volga was immediately recognized only by journalists from the capital, who looked at it back in the spring at the presidential residence in Novo-Ogarevo (Putin took George Bush, who was visiting him, for a ride in it). How the car purchased by the president got to Sochi, whether it arrived under its own power or was brought by plane, is unknown. It is also unknown where Vladimir Putin drove his car to the new tunnel: from the Sochi residence “Bocharov Ruchey” itself or from the airport in Adler. Most likely, from Bocharov Stream the president flew by helicopter to the airport, where he got behind the wheel of a Volga that was waiting for him and drove to the tunnel, which is less than 20 km from the airport. It is hard to believe that Vladimir Putin, without police escort, drove his rarity through traffic jams at the peak time through the entire center of Sochi - he would have had to travel about 60 km from Bocharov Stream. In addition, there are no bypass routes at the resort yet, there is only one road.
After the opening ceremony of the tunnel, the show with the Volga continued: Vladimir Putin again got behind the wheel of his car, the Governor of the Krasnodar Territory Alexander Tkachev sat next to him in the passenger seat, and the Minister of Transport Igor Levitin and the Mayor of Sochi Viktor Kolodyazhny sat behind him. And everyone went to Krasnaya Polyana. By the way, this was the first time that Vladimir Putin arrived in Krasnaya Polyana not by air. But he still flew back to Sochi by helicopter.
In the mountains, at the beginning of the only cable car in the vicinity of Krasnaya Polyana, the President spoke with vacationers. Particularly lucky was an elderly teacher at school No. 49 in the city of Orsk, Orenburg region, who asked Vladimir Putin to help with the renovation of the school building. The head of state promised to help.
Interestingly, throughout the day, Vladimir Putin did not publicly say a word about the connection between the opening of the new tunnel and Sochi’s claims to host the 2014 Winter Olympics. But in all the comments on the ceremony of putting the tunnel into operation, a lot was said about this connection. They say that the new tunnel is the first Olympic facility that solves the transport problem. However, it is too early to talk about the Olympics. The fact is that the capacity of the updated Krasnopolyanskoye Highway, and this was stated in the president’s speech, is only 3.5 thousand vehicles per day in one direction. This is significantly less than the flow that, for example, rushed to the town of Zhukovsky near Moscow last weekend for the MAKS-2005 air show. Presumably, even more people will go to the Olympics. But unlike Zhukovsky, which could also be reached by train, only one road leads to Krasnaya Polyana. Igor GLANIN, Sochi |
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