Project to build high-speed Moscow - St Petersburg line

On 1 April, Russian Railways held a conference on a project to build a high-speed line linking Moscow and St Petersburg. The meeting involved representatives of Russian state bodies and the scientific and business communities, and the directors of high-speed railway projects in Portugal, France, and the Netherlands.

Opening the conference, Russian Railways President Vladimir Yakunin <http://eu.vocuspr.com/Url.aspx?522698x358666x-71808&gt; said: the project to build a high-speed Moscow - St Petersburg rail line with the use of CLM (Contract Lifecycle Management) is not only the first such project for Russian Railways, but the first project on this level and scale in Russia.

Our goal is to adopt this invaluable experience and avoid mistakes, as we will be following the same route that our foreign colleagues have taken, Yakunin said.

International experience shows that CLM allows outlays to be substantially reduced (by 20-40%), international financing to be obtained (up to 50% of capital expenditure), and technological risks to be lowered, and enables the project to be completed on schedule, to a high level of quality.

A presentation of European experience in this field was given by Jan Ochtman, director of the Amsterdam-Brussels rail line project, Gabriel du Plessis, SNCF's international project development director, Carlos Fernandez, director of the Lisbon - Madrid rail line project, Rui S. Monteiro, director of the Portuguese Finance Ministry's PPP Unit, and Jan van Schoonhoven, PPP director of the Netherlands Ministry of Transport.

The project to build a high-speed Moscow - St Petersburg line was presented by High-Speed Rail Lines Director Denis Muratov.

Key design parameters of the high-speed Moscow - St Petersburg line:

- length - 660 km;

- journey time - 2 hours 30 minutes;

- maximum speed - 400 km/h;

- predicted passenger volume - 14 million per year;

- engineering structures - more than 250.

The cumulative discounted social effect of the high-speed line will be 1.5 trillion rubles. Socio-economic benefits exceed spending on implementation almost twofold. The introduction of CLM and European standards will allow expenditure to be reduced by 30 - 40%.