OREANDA-NEWS. September 17, 2012. Vladimir Yakunin, President of Russian Railways, and Sergei Sobyanin, Moscow’s Mayor, discussed prospective passenger rail infrastructure projects on the Moscow transport hub, reported the press-centre of RZD.  

"The Moscow railway hub is one of the largest in the world and the busiest in the Russia’s railway network. It handles over half of the country’s suburban passenger traffic and about 23% of its long-distance passengers. About 1.3 million passengers use Moscow region’s rail transport services every day," said Vladimir Yakunin.

One of the most promising joint projects being carried out by the two parties is the reconstruction and development of the Small Ring at Moscow Railways as an intra-city public transit mode. An expert team is now designing the rail infrastructure facilities and coordinating them with street and road network development programmes and other municipal programmes. The project envisages the construction of 30 roadside stations and 100 pairs of electric trains a day running along two dedicated tracks of the Small Ring.

When the service is launched, Muscovites will have 350 intra-city transfer points, radically relieving traffic in the city centre and improving the connectivity of the capital’s transport network.

Another equally important issue is to develop the infrastructure of radial suburban railway lines that currently run at 100% capacity. To increase passenger traffic flows, it is necessary to construct new railway line in the main directions, upgrade facilities at railway stations and connect various transport modes at terminal interchange hubs.

The parties also discussed developing the areas surrounding railway stations and replacing railway surface level crossings and pedestrian walks and highways.

All the above arrangements are part of the 2012-2020 Programme to Implement Top-Priority Railway Infrastructure Development Projects to Improve Intra-city and Suburban Public Transit on the Moscow Railway Hub, which was developed by an expert team at Russian Railways.

The document will be coordinated with the Moscow city government and pay special attention to the development of the city’s transport infrastructure. The total cost of the programme is estimated at 236 billion roubles. The projects will be funded by Russian Railways, Moscow city government and Russia’s federal authorities.