Russia, a country with the largest territory in the world, is in for a road collapse. Traffic outside Russia's major cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, will be reduced to a crawl. The same is imminent in Novosibirsk, Sochi, Yekaterinburg, Vladivostok and some other industrial centers. This is what Igor Levitin, Russia's transport minister, recently said at a meeting with parliamentarians.
According to him, bad roads are the reason of the high accident rate in Russia, which is four times more per 1,000 cars than in developed countries. Every year, over 35,000 people die in car crashes in Russia, and material damage almost runs into billions of dollars.
The minister had to admit that only 20% of motorways of the federal network would live up to the accepted standards by 2010, and only 5% of the regional network. The average speed of traffic will go down by 20%. Moreover, if the pace of road building remains the same as in the past four years, the country would have only 240 km (!) of new and restored highways by 2010. All the major road construction projects - bridges, tunnels and road interchanges - will be frozen.
According to the World Bank, Russia's 7% of GDP growth allows it to commission 17,000 km of roads annually. By comparison, about 35,000 km of new roads are put into operation in China every year.
Russia's road sector is in dire straits, according to the transport minister. It must really be as such, for the minister hardly needs to exaggerate the situation in front of the Russian parliamentarians. It is rather an appeal to the lawmakers to provide urgent government aid.
How did such a disastrous situation come about? High oil prices allow Russia to reap vast budget funds and accumulate substantial gold and currency reserves ($137 billion), set up and replenish the Stabilization Fund (which accumulated over $25 billion by early March, and is expected to double by 2006). At the same time, Levitin openly points out that the road builders' problems are snowballing due to never-ending shortage of funds in the sector. In the past five years, the federal allocations were nearly $3 billion short.
Road building expenditures dropped from 29% of the consolidated budget of the constituent federation members in 2000 to 9.1% in 2004.
Road building expenditures fell to 1.3% of the GDP.
It is one of the lowest indicators in Europe (Finland spends 4% of its GDP on road building, Italy 4.5%, Great Britain and France 3.5% and so on). The experts who the minister referred to are convinced that Russia should spend at least 2.5% of its GDP, or $14-15 billion, a year on the road building effort, subsequently raising the spending up to 3.5-4% of GDP within the next decade. Simultaneously, the share of private investment in the road building should be gradually increasing to 18-20% ($2-3 billion) a year. To this end, the minister believes that public-private partnership should be established in large-scale investment projects with subsequent long-term leasing or concession.
Besides, the minister asked lawmakers to accelerate the work on the law On Concession Agreements and On Toll Roads due to their huge importance in the relevant legal framework of the public-private partnership in the transport sector.
According to a US legend, President Roosevelt draw three lines on the country's map, which crossed the country lengthwise and three lines that crossed it breadth wise. As legend has it, this is how the federal plan of the US highways emerged. About 43,000 km of asphalt roads appeared at the first stage. The government allocated enormous funds from the budget.
If people in the Kremlin or in the government drew something like that with a red pencil on the Russian map, and allotted relevant funds to the road builders, providing them with tax breaks, the US dream would have a Russian continuation.
Moreover, the US has over 250 highways named after historical figures and landmark vents (they believe that an unnamed highway brings bad luck). Just imagine that Russians could be driving along the Moscow-St. Petersburg highway "named after Gref" or the Novorizhskaya (new Riga) highway named after Finance Minister Kudrin (born in Latvia).
