They sailed

The project of the Voronezh metro failed with a bang, minibuses die, and the millionaire city dreams of developing shipping

Voronezh Governor Alexander Gusev announced his intention to develop river transport in the city as a seasonal alternative to a public - on this subject the regional government even held a meeting.

“We will carefully, but sequentially move towards the development of river transport with the prospect of the possibility of filling it to the public,” said the head of the region, opening the meeting.

It is supposed to develop this same transport in the water area of ​​the Voronezh reservoir, built in 1971-1972. Its area is 60 square kilometers, and at one time it was recognized as one of the most unsuccessful among such man -made reservoirs built during the USSR. Small reservoir, from May to September, it is overgrown with fetid algae, and now within the city there is not a single official beach: Sanbracks every spring after the sampling of water is forbidden to the townspeople to swim in the waters of the reservoir. And then suddenly

In the vocabulary of the head of the region, the expression “shipping paths” appeared-neither to give nor take Peter the First, who once built his fleet nearby. And in the near future, Voronezh with a fetid dirty puddle, dividing the city into two parts, will be able to stand on a par with Amsterdam, Venice or, at worst, Peter with their river tram or gondolas ...

The governor’s office calculated that the length of the shipping routes in Voronezh is 39 km, but the corresponding infrastructure is still insufficient for the millionaire city. And not just determined, but in August 2023 they created the Coordinating Council for the development of internal water transport, the chairman of which was the head of the Governor's Secretariat Igor Lotkov.

According to the mayor of the city of Vadim Kstenin, to build moorings at the places of stops of water transport in actually already in 2024. In total, at the first stage of the implementation of this program in the city, it is supposed to build 15 marinas. And how can one not recall the failed project of 2017 for construction in Voronezh Metro?

Then the Kinosarg LLC, which won the tender for the development of a project of a high-speed rail transport system, prepared a feasibility study of the creation of subway in Voronezh.

Note that Voronezh is a very small city for its millionth population. It was about the construction of 54 stations on three branches crossing the city in all directions, the total length of these branches was supposed to be 60 kilometers. Local residents twisted a finger at the temple about this venture and demanded to better establish the work of minibuses, instead of digging the whole city for 10-12 years.

- The metro needs a permanent large passenger flow - from 22 thousand people per hour. In Voronezh, the maximum intensity of passenger flows - 24 thousand people - is achieved only during peak hours. The rest of the time, the Metrovas will carry air and generate multimillion -dollar losses to the city, ”Yuri Novikov then warned the head of the public organization“ City and Transport ”.

And in 2020, to the joy of citizens, the governor of the region Alexander Gusev finally closed the topic of the metro:

- We actually sincerely believed that the idea can be realized with the support of the federal center. But this was until 2020 - then a decision was made at the federal level not to allocate funds for the construction of new metro facilities, but only to complete the existing ones. We could not get into this program, because we did not have a single branch. Thus, in at least any foreseeable future the appearance of the metro in Voronezh you can not wait.

It is clear that it is always convenient to engage in such maneils:

• Firstly, the illusion of socially useful activities is created,

• Secondly, any large-scale construction is the same “muddy water” of budget financing, in which it is drawn to “catch fish”.

But if we are talking about transport, it may be better to somehow develop what works in the very least today, than to pour the Potemkin villages?

... at the beginning and mid -December 2023, when the snow was snowing in the city for a week, when the utilities did not clean it at all, and instead of 1000–1100 daily minibuses came out of 60–80, when people knee -deep in the snow went to work and home 4–5 kilometers home, and taxi drivers for the fares of 4–5 stops were lupi from people and a half. Thousands of rubles, the Voronezhs together sent curses to drivers of minibuses and their owners.

But if you look at all this from the cabin of the average city minibus, it turns out that the city lacks 40% of drivers (the average salary of which is 50 thousand rubles), that about 10-15% of them went to his, that, for example, 4 million rubles were production buses, now 7.1 million. And the cost of spare parts over the past two years in different positions increased by 3-10 times. The wear of the city fleet today is about 70%.

According to the results of snowfalls, the head of the Road Department of the City Hall of Voronezh Oleg Kotov explained that

347 units of the snow -removing equipment that the city has today is only about 30% of the necessary standard for winter cleaning.

This was one of the reasons that these days of minibuses on the streets of Voronezh were actually not at all.

But the governor, instead of investing as much as possible in the existing transport industry, prefers to build air locks.