OREANDA-NEWS. April 09, 2012. During a conference call, the President of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin announced that the Company would be investing 428.4 billion roubles in 2012, reported the press-centre of Russian Railways.  

"The Company’s investment budget for this year has been set at 428.4 billion roubles, 8.3% more than in 2012. These parameters were approved at a meeting of the Company’s Board of Directors," said Yakunin.

According to Yakunin, the plan for investment activities during the first quarter of 2012 has been fulfilled.

"I would like to stress that we are carrying out the construction of Olympic facilities strictly according to schedule. During the first quarter, we completed the construction of the stretch between Vodopadnyi - Lazarevskaya, which enabled us to complete the last stage of the railway line from Tuapse to Adler, which is needed for the Olympic Games," said Vladimir Yakunin.

Yakunin also said that it is planned to carry out repairs of all types on 10,421 kilometres of track on the rail network during 2012. The volume of assembled rails and sleepers to be laid this year will see a significant increase of almost 18% to 7,244 km.

Also planned is scheduled maintenance on 1,200 km of lines, which will consist of laying highest quality rails made in Japan and Austria and sleepers with elastic fastenings.

This will increase the intervals between overhauls on the upgraded sections by a factor of 1.6 from 700 million tons gross to 1.1 billion tons gross.