Roads that rob us

Why are highways in Russia built slowly, badly and expensive

In the last rating of the quality of roads compiled by the World Economic Forum, Russia takes 118th place out of 133. The position is simply humiliating for the state, which is part of the “big eight”. After all, roads in the modern world are the most important indicator of the country's development. And for our power - the largest in the territory on the globe - the state of the highways is doubly important. The New Times correspondents experienced the charms of domestic highways on themselves, having traveled from Moscow to Brest , studied the features of road construction from Novosibirsk to Kaliningrad , and also compared our roads with Germany (5th place in the quality of road quality), Italy superfluid (53rd place) and motto Finland (12th place). The comparison was far from our favor. About the reasons for this - politician Boris Nemtsov .

Equal to Leso. The fact that roads are the trouble of Russia, the classic said in the 19th century. In the XXI century, the problem has aggravated even more: the length of the domestic motor vehicles does not reach world standards, they are built at an extremely low pace, and the quality does not withstand any criticism. Why so - versed The New Times

The average speed of movement of goods in a European coeze is 1000 km per day, in Russia it does not exceed 300 km. Only 9% of cargo is transported on our roads on cars, more than 76% in Europe. As a result, the cost of transportation is one and a half times higher than in Europe, and fuel consumption exceeds the European analogue by a third.

Cunning statistics

In Russia, there are not enough roads, according to the head of the Center for Research of the post-industrial society Vladislav Inozemtsev: “From 1995 to 2007, the length of roads, according to Rosstat, has not changed much: if 15 years ago it was 940 thousand km, then in 2007-963 thousand km”. That is, over 12 years, the length of Russian roads increased by a barely noticeable amount of 0.02%.
But even this ridiculous figure, with a careful study of the data of Rosstat, turns out to be artificially stretched: in fact, the length of public roads for 1995-2005 did not increase in Russia, but decreased by 9%. “The increase in the length in 2006-2007 occurred at the expense of a purely statistical procedure - inclusion in the calculations of road roads. Only this operation explains the “successes” of recent years in the field of development of road infrastructure, ”the expert explains.

To China is far away

Maybe comparing huge and relatively poor Russia with compact and prosperous Europe is not entirely correct? Well, let's look at the third most area of ​​the country of the world - China. * * The area of ​​the Russian Federation - 17.1 million square meters. km, PRC Square - 9.6 million square meters. km. According to the Center for Macroeconomic Research (TsMI) Sberbank, in 2008, 2.5 thousand km of all types of roads were built in Russia, while in the PRC - 21.4 times more (53.6 thousand km). The total length of the road network in China is 1.9 million km: almost twice as much as in Russia. * * By 2030, China plans to increase the length of its roads to 3 million km.
Our country is seriously behind not only along the length of the tracks. Only 40% of federal roads corresponds to the standards for the quality of the coating, the width of the strip. We are inferior even to those countries that we are used to looking down. In terms of quality of roads of the Russian Federation, it takes 118th place out of 133 possible. * * The Global Competivence Report 2009–2010. Our neighbors on the table are Mozambique, Burundi, Kyrgyzstan. And let's say, in Kazakhstan, Uganda, Mauritania and Lesotho, the quality of roads will be higher.

Meanwhile, the budget allocates hundreds of billions of rubles for the development of the road system every year. In the federal budget-2010, sequestered in the crisis for many articles, the costs of road farming are 263.4 billion rubles, almost as much as in the pre-crisis 2008 (271.1 billion). In total, over the past three years, the government spent 842.1 billion rubles for these purposes.
To understand how effectively these billions are spent, it is enough to compare the cost of building roads in the USA and Russia. One kilometer of Hyveya Interstate Route 125 in California, the operation of which began in 2007, cost an American taxpayer € 3.8 million ($ 5.5 million). * * Data from the report of V. Inozemtsev “Coercion to Innovation”. M., 2009. One kilometer of the Krasnodar -Novorossiysk road cost the Russian budget 6 times more than American taxpayers: € 22 million; new ring road in the Moscow region - € 28 million; Western high-speed diameter in St. Petersburg-€ 103 million kilometers of Adler-Krasnaya Polyana, according to forecasts, will cost € 92–93 million. The fourth transport ring in Moscow is the record holder in € 414 million. It turns out that this transport ring costs, like 10 larger adronical adhesive Collider!
But not only the construction costs the Russian budget “in a penny”: the standard service life of the motorcade in Russia is 10-12 years, while in Sweden, the climatic conditions of which are similar to ours, this indicator is 40 years. According to Inozemtsev’s calculations, the costs of maintaining a motor vehicle in the EU are € 2.3 thousand per year per 1 km, we have € 11 thousand.

Cheaper - you can

“In Russia, considerable experience has been accumulated in the field of durable cement concrete coatings, allowing to increase the actual life of roads from normative 20–25 years to 30–40,” the foreigner report “Coercion to Innovation” said. These technologies are actively used in road construction in the countries of the European Union, USA, Canada. About 65% of the highway in Germany is built using the laying of reinforced concrete plates, in China - 38%. But in Russia, roads with such coating are not stubbornly built.
The use of modern technologies in road construction reduces the cost of construction, significantly increases the life of roads, increases labor productivity (8-10 times) and ensures the loading of reinforced concrete products and metallurgical plants, the expert claims. But the most important thing is that new ways of building roads increase the safety of transportation. * * According to the number of those who died in an accident, according to the statistics of the UN World Health Organization, Russia occupies the second place in the world - 25.2 deaths per 100 thousand people, second only to Kazakhstan - 30.6.
According to experts, an approximate estimate of the costs of materials, products and construction work for the proposed technology of 1 km of a highway 7.2 m wide (two lanes) in Russia is 27.3 million rubles (less than $ 1 million), including materials and products, work and transportation costs.
The question suggests itself: why are more economical technologies not used? The answer that experts unanimously give: corruption, which infuriates the price of road construction ten times. It is much more profitable for officials to “saw” a lot of money than to look for ways to save them.