OREANDA-NEWS. January 11, 2013.  Transcript of the beginning of the meeting: Dmitry Medvedev: So let’s return to the development of Moscow’s transport hub.

Today we meet to follow up on the previous meeting which took place not long ago. On that occasion, we discussed the need to revise Russia’s Transport Strategy until 2030 and update the development programme for the Moscow Region’s transport hub until 2020. The situation remains strained: more funding is needed, including Government and private investment. We also need consistent cooperative efforts on the part of the federal ministry and the regional and municipal authorities, as well as the carrier companies. Finally we need modern approaches to regulating transport flows.

Modernising Moscow’s railway hub remains a priority. I am referring to the organisation of passenger service along the so-called Smaller Moscow Belt Railway (SMBR) and moving freight farms, as well as approach lines away from the city centre. On December 30, the Government approved a state programme Development of the Transport System until 2020. Under that programme, it is planned to allocate 17.5 billion roubles annually from 2015-2020 for railway infrastructure development in the Moscow Region. In the next few years, Russian Railways and the Moscow Government plan to modernise five radial railways directions in Moscow: the Yaroslavskoye, Gorkovskoye, Kurskoye, Kazanskoye and Savyolovskoye lines.

In 2013, the federal Government will also provide additional subsidies to Moscow from federal budgets to co-finance transport infrastructure projects.

Nearly 12 billion roubles in total will be allocated, which will be used to build multilevel interchanges and overhead roads where motorways cross with railway lines.

A few more words about the importance of regulating traffic. The Moscow Government has adopted a decision for gradually rerouting cargo vehicles from the Moscow Ring Road. It is a challenging task, and we will clearly need to build modern logistic hubs and special parking lots at the same time. The federal agencies have not been up to scratch on this score so far, and the same is also true about the situation in the Moscow Region. All of us are lagging behind in this and we should get moving faster. The project to build the Central Ring Road has been postponed several times; we were supposed to launch it in 2011, but as things stand at the moment, we are only just preparing for it in some areas. We need to catch up.

Special parking lots must also be built everywhere, but most of all in the Moscow Region. I hope that the efforts to redistribute freight traffic towards the Moscow Region will be accelerated. The regional system of organising interurban bus routes will produce a positive result, streamlining bus stops and routes, especially in areas near terminals and stations.

I believe that these are the issues which we can discuss in brief today. Mr Sokolov, (Maxim Sokolov, Minister of Transport), you may go ahead.

Maxim Sokolov: Mr Prime Minister, colleagues. The Moscow Transport Hub is important not only for the two federal entities [where it is based] – Moscow and the Moscow Region, but also the country as a whole. During our meeting on September 19 last year, we discussed how this hub was working, and you instructed us to expand it or to enhance its efficiency. We sought to carry out these instructions and we have held two coordinating council meetings, attended by Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and Acting Governor of the Moscow Region Andrei Vorobyov. There we analysed the further efforts taken towards this goal and the measures to develop the Moscow Transport Hub.

As regards the transport elements of this, total allocations on the development of the commuter train system have been approved at some 236 billion roubles, including some 53 billion roubles to be provided from the federal budget, 47.5 billion from the Moscow City budget and about 44 billion roubles by Russian Railways.