Money for rivers

Tariffs for freight car can become variable. The Ministry of Transport offers to increase them for the navigation period, from April to November - in order to reorient the cargo flow on the waterways. The corresponding proposal was announced at a meeting of the Presidium of the State Council for the development of domestic water transport in the country, Minister of Transport Maxim Sokolov.

He emphasized that the loading of roads is constantly growing, and meanwhile, the directions of many roads coincide with areas of the internal waterways, and using this mode of transport is quite appropriate. “One river composition with a carrying capacity of 8 thousand tons is able to replace 400 20 ton trucks,” TASS as saying an example, which was selected by the head of the department.

According to the Minister, in order to push to reorient from roads to internal water transport, a ban on transporting divisible cargo with heavy vehicles by roads is introduced, as well as additional points of weight control, various tools for compensation for the roads.

Road Libra / Wikipedia.org

Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed that river cargo transportation must be stimulated. The government must take operational measures to stimulate this, he noted on the presidium of the State Council. At the same time, Putin added that, for example, in China, where the number of rivers is comparable to their number in Russia, cargo turnover in waterways is 12 times more than Russian. Moreover, Putin emphasized, Russian water freight turning behind even from those European countries where the length of the rivers is much less than in Russia.

Meanwhile, according to the president, if you pay attention to the achievement of the balance of transportation by different types of transport, then the result will be not only a decrease in budget costs, but also a reduction in the costs of consignors.

Experts note that the performance of this task is quite difficult. As Mikhail Yakovlevich Blinkin, director of the Institute for Economics of Transport and Transport Policy of the Higher School of Economics, said in an interview with Polit.ru, it is clear that the decision of the Ministry of Transport can cause dissatisfaction with car owners, but it is economically reasonably.

Mikhail Blinkin

“Today, approximately 45 or even almost 50 million Russian motorists with their target payments (and this is an excise tax on gasoline or diesel fuel and transport tax) pay about 60-65% of the expenses of the total government to the roads. The total government is federal, regional, city budgets together and so on.

This balance, in fact, is quite exotic, because if you take Europe, things are completely different there. For example, German motorists pay not only roads and streets, but from this you can “pinch” on a tram and a metro. In this sense, increasing the price of car ownership, car driving prices is a thing, in essence, inevitable. This is a pure policy. That is, the economy requires this, and when the government does it, no one can say.

That is, it is clear: the people will be offended, someone will worry, but purely in economic common sense, increasing the price of car ownership, the price of a trip by car, it does not even matter, in a large truck or a small passenger car, will increase. This is an objective economic reality. As the government will do when - today, tomorrow, in the form of some payments, other payments are a clean policy. In economics, in terms of economic balance, this must be done, ”explained Mikhail Blinkin.

At the same time, he emphasized that the problem of transferring part of the cargo flow to the waterways cannot be solved by one change in tariffs: it is necessary, first of all, to put these very waterways in order.

“Whether this will help to transfer cargo to the inner waterways, a very difficult question. Because our waterways are in a fairly serious condition. Just now, on the State Council, the problem of internal waterways was stated. For example, in the Nizhny Novgorod region there is a gap along the Volga. That is, here I am walking along it on a four-deck ribby-rod-and then I have to land passengers and take them with a bus to the next deep place. We need very serious money that will have to be invested in the waterways to put them in order.

Where to look for this money? Well, here is the Ministry of Transport, which is responsible for roads, railways and rivers, is looking for some kind of balance.

There is no good solution yet. What the Minister of Transport suggested is a difficult decision, but who will offer better? Really difficult, but there are no good solutions on the table at all. We must look for money for the maintenance of the internal waterways, because if we do not put them in order, no one will carry goods there. And they will not carry passengers either. Well, here they sold a person tickets for a good crucifix - this is an expensive tourist option, beautiful and pleasant - but there is no depth! So it remains only to plant passengers.

To put the waterways in order is a very expensive task. Well, here they are looking for money for this. There is nothing good in the proposed, but just to leave everything as it is is impossible. It is necessary to somehow solve this problem, and the ways of its solution are not yet visible, ”the expert explained.

Fog on the Vyatka River / Photo: Sergey Brovko

Blinkin emphasized that the feasibility of water transportation in some cases is undeniable.

“The river to carry some types of goods himself ordered. Ordinary, simple, bulk cargoes - sand, crushed stone, ore, watermelons, anything like that - even in those countries where there are no more roads than in Russia

River transport is intensively used in Western Europe, where with a road network, as you know, 10 times better than ours. And in the United States of America, where both the state of the road network and its length are incomparable with ours, carry goods along the rivers - because it is profitable.

We have developed some deformation, as if it was cheaper to carry a car - it has developed over the years, over 25 years. As a result, those types of goods that even in the most road countries are driving along the rivers, we manage to carry cars. And the Ministry of Transport is trying to solve the task of correcting this situation.

But while the decision only gropes for, let's say so, ”he summed up.