Trans-Siberian Railroad will be completely refurbished. A multibillion-dollar government plan to improve infrastructure was announced by President Vladimir Putin.
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Mr. Putin said the National Welfare Fund will give $13.6 billion (450 billion rubles) on three infrastructure projects, including the construction of a high-speed rail line from Moscow to Kazan, and the modernization of the Trans Siberian Railroad and the Baikal-Amur Mainline.
The Trans-Siberian is a mean of travel but, even more important, it is a major route for transporting goods and resources from Russia's Far East to Moscow, and part of a vital link between Europe and Asia.
"A direct rail link across Eurasia will become the main transportation artery between Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. This will give a powerful boost to development for Siberia and the Far East," Mr. Putin said.
The Trans-Siberian railroad starts in Moscow and goes across the whole country, passing through major cities like Ekaterinburg, Tyumen, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, going through Irkutsk south of Lake Baikal to Khabarovsk and Vladivostok. It is the main rail line in the eastern part of Russia, capable of handling 120 million tons of freight per year.
Another legendary railway in Siberia is the Baikal-Amur Mainline, or BAM. A Soviet construction project, it begins by linking to the Trans-Siberian line between Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk at junction Taishet and runs north of Lake Baikal parallel to the Trans-Siberian before arriving at the Pacific Ocean port of Sovetskaya Gavan.
Completed in 1984 after 10 years of construction, the route virtually stopped operating only eight years later because ther was no enough freight.
After the completion of 15 kilometer long Severomuisky Tunnel in northwestern Buryatia in 2003, the BAM slowly started to recover but the freight volumes are to small to bring revenues and only 16 million tons per year can be transported via the BAM.
However, the government created a strategy to strengthen the BAM to gake heavy freight trains carrying natural resources, while the Trans-Siberian line would be used mainly for fast passenger trains and containers filled with various consumer products. ■