April 03, 2018, 00:41 / Economics

A high-speed tram to Peterhof will appear in St. Petersburg

City authorities are ready to spend more than 10 billion rubles Olga Adamchuk

The authorities of St. Petersburg expect to bring many tourists from the outskirts to the main attraction of the city / Elena Kenunen / Interpress / TASS

To make it easier for tourists to visit attractions, the administration of St. Petersburg is preparing to select an investor through a competition who will build a high-speed tram network to Peterhof, two infrastructure project consultants told Vedomosti and confirmed the chairman of the St. Petersburg Investment Committee Irina Babyuk. The competition will be announced this week, she said.

Now the most reliable public transport for a trip to Peterhof is the train from the Baltic Station, but from the New Peterhof station to the Imperial Palace, the main destination of tourists, most of them have to walk for a long time - about 3 km.

Municipal buses and minibuses connect the station and the palace, but most of them are not equipped with air conditioning and are overcrowded, and not all tourists can afford trips by helicopter, Meteor motor ships, as well as trips to the tourist area by taxi.

The existing transport infrastructure has already exhausted its carrying capacity, and active housing construction is underway in the Petrodvortsovy district (which includes Peterhof), says Evgeniy Vasiliev, deputy director of the St. Petersburg Investment Committee.

To connect Peterhof with St. Petersburg with a tram network, about 20 km of tram tracks will have to be completed. The St. Petersburg Investment Committee estimates the costs of this project at approximately 10.6 billion rubles.

The high-speed tram route will be divided into two stages (launch complexes): first, a branch will be built from the existing tram tracks - along the street. Marshal Kazakova, Baltic Boulevard, st. Marshal Zakharov, Avenue of Heroes to the Peterhof Highway - with a total length of 6 km (its cost is estimated at 4.3 billion rubles), and then - from the existing tracks on the Peterhof Highway to the city of Peterhof. This is 14 km of tracks, including the construction of five artificial structures across water barriers; the total cost of the second part of the project is estimated at 6.3 billion rubles. According to the most pessimistic forecasts, passenger traffic will be 17 million people a year, says Vasiliev; in general, expectations are higher - 30 million passengers.

The first part of the route can be built around 2023: after signing the agreement, two years will be spent on designing and obtaining land plots for the investor, and another two years on designing and commissioning the first launch complex, the customer plans. As for the second part of the project, the decision on its construction will be made separately.

The starting point of the new tram line is located far from metro stations, but the tram will pick up passengers at the Yugo-Zapadnaya metro station - existing tram tracks will be used. The average speed on the route will be more than 25 km/h, i.e. the tram network will be high-speed, Vasiliev explained.

The first section of the high-speed tram route in the Moscow region has been determined

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For the first launch complex, the investor will have to build a tram depot and purchase 11 modern three-section trams, and for the second – eight more. The St. Petersburg authorities plan to attract private investors through a concession scheme: the infrastructure they built will remain the property of the city, but the investor will receive compensation for both the construction of the line and its operation, minus the revenue generated by passenger fares. The competition will be held precisely in order to reduce the amount of compensation, Vasiliev explains, but does not say what the maximum amount that investors will be able to claim is. One investor will be selected for both launch complexes, the concession period will be up to 30 years, Vasiliev concludes.

According to the National Center for Public-Private Partnerships, slightly less than 10 tram projects are under consideration by regional authorities: in the Voronezh, Samara, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Moscow regions, St. Petersburg and Leningrad region. For example, branches are planned from Peterhof - metro station "Kirovsky Zavod" ("Putilovskaya"), metro station "Shushary" ("Yuzhnaya") - Kolpino in St. Petersburg, from metro station "Ladozhskaya" to Vsevolozhsk in the Leningrad region. In the near future, the results of the competition for the construction of a tram network from Kupchin to Slavyanka will be summed up; the structure of VTB Bank and a consortium consisting of the ABZ-1 Group of Companies and Gazprombank are fighting for it; it has requested fewer operating payments. Tram traffic has begun on the line, which is being reconstructed under a concession in the Krasnogvardeisky district by a consortium of the developer LSR and the Leader Management Company.

The tram is of interest to investors, says Maxim Tkachenko, executive director of the National PPP Center: capital-intensive projects with state guarantees, traffic and demand for the service in megacities will only grow.

The tram will be developed in large cities where the problem of traffic jams is being solved, says CLS managing lawyer Dmitry Raev.

In small towns, the entire tram network will have to be managed, and banks will not be so willing to invest under municipal quasi-guarantees, Denis Kachkin, partner at the law firm Kachkin and Partners, is sure.

Interest in trams has returned: they are cheaper than the metro, but comparable in efficiency, according to a study by Kachkin and Partners: France, Belgium, Spain, Denmark, Germany, and Slovakia are developing tram networks under public-private partnership conditions. The advantages of the tram include high environmental friendliness, good carrying capacity, low cost and maintenance costs, as listed in the study. In Russia, the deterioration of networks and trams is great, lawyers write, and little budgetary funds are allocated for their repair and maintenance.

Due to inflationary processes in the economy, as well as an improvement in the quality of services, from 2011 to 2016, the cost of transporting passengers increased by 78%, while revenues from rising tariffs increased only by 44%, the authors of the study refer to data from the Transport Committee Government of St. Petersburg.