They’ve been building the Fourth Ring Road on and off. According to its project, after they open the Forth Ring Road, the traffic jam situation on the MKAD and the Third Ring Road will improve.
The work began in 2008 with the construction of a parking lot which was to be above the road. Apparently, the builders were very enthusiastic about it at first, so the pace of construction was really fast.
In the end of 2009, they opened 4 auxiliary traffic lanes… and that’s it.
If you google the road, this is what you’ll get. The opening date keeps being put off. At first they said it was going to open in 2008, then 2009, 2010, 2011…
But as far as it looks, they won’t be able to finish it in 2011 either.
Recently, new information concerning the road construction came up. So, according to Moscow officials, the project of the Fourth Ring Road is going to be changed, but by 2013, the road will be put into operation. Really?
In fact they’ve done a lot already, even though Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said that construction of the Fourth Ring Road was too expensive for the city (30 billion dollars!). The point is that since they opened the Third Road Ring, nothing’s really changed for the better and, moreover, with this price of the construction, in the years to come the city will have to spend all its budget on the road and nothing else.
Is it really that expensive? Some compare the price of one kilometer of the road with the price of one kilometer of the Large Hadron Collider. Other say that it is comparable with the famous bridge in France or the tunnel in Boston, which was the most expensive project in the history of the USA. Moscow officials deny the charge, assuring that the price is reasonable.
To build a 3.8 kilometer-long section of the road, they claim that they need about 2.2 billion dollars!
Here is another comparison to make it clear for you: to build a 2.4-kilometer long Viaduc de Millau in France, they spent 530 million dollars, which is cheaper than to build just one kilometer of the Fourth Ring Road in Russia. We do not mention the fact that the French bridge is a masterpiece of engineering, breaking three world records.
One kilometer of the Fourth Ring Road is twice as expensive as one kilometer of the undersea Channel Tunnel!
They say that if it had been built not in Moscow but somewhere else, let’s say in the field, they would need just 1 billion dollars, because in this case they wouldn’t have to move industries from the way, purchase citizens’ garages and preserve the infrastucture.
The most difficult part was to persuade the owners of the garages to sell their sheds; The Russian Railways was the easiest to agree with. Maybe it was so because the company’s managers are also shareholders of the company ‘Mostotrest’ which’d won the tender for the construction of a 3.871-kilomemer-long section of the road…
The road is going to have four lanes in both directions, plus additional exit and entrance lanes.
A multilevel parking lot for 5000 cars. It looks like they’ve finished it…
But you’ll find no car in there.
Under the parking lot there are two underground four-lane tunnels.
Builders say that nobody knows when the road will be finished because they’ve spent all the money already…
‘America’.
Why do they build so expensive and complicated pedestrian crossings over the highway? W H Y?
Two cars can fit into this crossing! And is it necessary to make it covered?
Hopefully, they’re making all this because they want to install elevators for disabled people…
In the MKAD such elevator wells are welded though…
Long live the Fourth Ring Road!
Location: Moscow
via chistoprudov
The way it happens here is that by the time a new road is finished we need a new road.
Might happen.
“Why do they build so expensive and complicated pedestrian crossings over the highway? W H Y?” – It’s Moscow. Snow load rating would be my guess, not to mention the weight given how many people it looks like it can accommodate.
“And is it necessary to make it covered?” – In Moscow in the winter, yes.
how much money for corrupt officials bro ?
Most of of the money is being embezzled by corrupt people. There was a investigation once done and it turned out that in Russia it is the most expensive per kilometer to build road then any other country in the world. Also when they tried to find out who gets the contracts and so on to build the roads there were so many sub contractors that they could not find who originally was given the contract.
I don’t know what I am bored with more, whether this would be the post itself with the strange accusations, or with the comments, thirsty for speculation on corruption. Pathetic. Boring. Speculative. Poorly supported by facts. Will there be something more interesting?
Hola!, it don’t really matter ’cause in about 10 years E.R. will be doing a spread on the abandoned fourth ring road project, complete with graffiti and the homeless people who live there.
There’s always wikipedia.
I say Russia have a *LOT* in common with Brazil.