OREANDA-NEWS. September 7, 2007. According to the Strategy, total investment in Russian rail transport up to 2030 will be 13.7 trillion roubles, 20% of which will come from the federal budget, 5% from the regions of the Russian Federation and 75% from private investors, including 42% from Russian Railways.

The draft Strategy will be presented to the government for final approval in November 2007 after the integrated social and economic plan for Russia’s development until 2020 has been confirmed.

The measures planned as part of the Strategy will ensure Russia’s development as a country of innovatiikon with a GDP increasing 4.5 times and industrial production 3.2 times by 2030.

"It is planned to build over 20,000 km of new railway lines by 2030,” said Vladimir Yakunin, president of Russian Railways. “By comparison, during the Soviet period, in other words, in over 70 years, around 30,000 km of new railway lines were built, including the Baikal-Amur Main Line. But in the last 15 years, the length of operational lines in Russia has actually fallen by 2,500 km."

To ensure that the demand for rail transoprt services will be met, the Strategy envisages that by 2015 all the locomotives, coaches and wagons which have finished their operating life will be retired from service.

The technical standards of the new rolling stock will be up to global levels.

"Implementing such massive programmes is becoming possble only as a result of the cooperation between the government and private business,” stressed Vladimir Yakunin. “The Strategy proposes a mechanism which tightly links the main directions of the future development of rail transport with those involved in the invesment process.”

As Vladimir Yakunin explained, the greatest amount of new rail construction is planned for Russia’s Eastern federal regions.

"That way, we will achieve an accelerated development of Eastern Siberia and Russia’s Far East, which have a population of over 18 million people, and we will create the conditions needed to develop coal deposits with an annual output of 65 million tonnes and to produce 10 million tonnes ore in 2030, as well as provide a major boost to the development of new oil and gas fields. Implementing the Strategy means the opportunity to develop over 30 new mineral deposits and industrial zones,“ said the president of Russian Railways.

The Strategy envisages that the the total length of express lines capable of carrying trains travelling at speeds of between 160 - 200 kph will be over 10,000 km, and that of high-speed main lines capable of speeds of up to 350 kph will be1,500 km.

It will then be possible to travel from Moscow to St. Petersburg in 2.5 hours, from Moscow to Nizhny Novgorod in 2 hours, from Moscow to Berlin in 8-10 hours and from Moscow to Sochi in 14-15 hours.