OREANDA-NEWS  On 11 December was announced, that the tunnel on Varshavskoe Highway under the railway link between Moscow and Kursk will be built this year and commissioned in early 2009.

“We intend to build the tunnel on Varshavskoe Highway, it is scheduled to be commissioned in 2009. To be more precise, it will have been built this year but equipped and commissioned only in 2009,” Pyotr Aksyonov, first deputy head of Department of Road and Bridge Engineering of Moscow, said.

The construction of the tunnel is the third stage of the reconstruction of Varshavskoe Highway which is the most complicated engineering project. Two previous stages have been completed this year: the carriageway has been widened to four lanes in both directions – firstly, from the MKAD to Melitopolskaya Street and then to Shcherbinka.

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov set the task not to slow down the pace of construction but speed it up because, according to him, the traffic problems in the Russian capital are the first to be solved even amid the global financial crisis.