Moscow-Beijing high-speed railway: construction, scheme, project and location on the map

Very soon, the high-speed Moscow-Beijing railway will connect the two states, China and Russia. The preliminary cost of the project is equivalent to 1.5 trillion yuan, or to 242 billion dollars. The total length of the road will be 7 thousand kilometers. The travel time from one point to another will be 2 days, and the road itself will be laid through the territory of Kazakhstan.

Minimum travel time

Today, China is actively offering its innovative technologies in the construction of international railways. One of such projects should be the Moscow-Beijing high-speed railway. The news spread around the world very quickly, especially if we consider the cooled relations between America, Europe and Russia in conjunction with the conflict in the east of Ukraine and with Russia's attempts to recover from the stunning collapse of the international oil market. In October 2014, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the Chinese Railway Construction Corporation and the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation, RZhD and the State Committee for Development and Reform of China on high-speed rail traffic. The main goal of the document was the development of the project of the Eurasian transport corridor of high-speed type, the structure of which will include the Moscow-Kazan highway.

The history of the idea

The high-speed railway Moscow-Beijing at the level of the idea has existed for quite a long time. The project should be a great alternative for those who do not have the desire to travel by air. The transfer of the idea to the level of the project under implementation took place against the background of the activation of purchases in America, the delivery of which is guaranteed by specialists in the shortest possible time. The high-speed railway project should provide countries like China and Russia with a worthy competitiveness in the international market. As mentioned above, according to representatives of Russian Railways, the Moscow-Beijing high-speed railway will cost 7 trillion rubles. Chinese partners are ready to invest in the construction of the road an amount equivalent to 4 trillion rubles, all other costs will be assigned to the Russian budget. Today, active negotiations are underway to allocate funds for the construction of the road on the route Moscow-Kazan in the framework of an international project.

What is delaying the construction of the road?

The period when the Moscow-Beijing high-speed road starts to be built, is little known. This is due to the protracted resolution of financing issues. Given the current situation in Russia, despite the fact that China is ready to take on most of the costs, the country is simply not ready to incur such large-scale financial expenses. 3 trillion rubles are today an enormous capital for the state. There is a high probability that private investors will be involved in the project.

Technical moments and preliminary decisions

The information provided by the correspondents of the newspaper The Beijing Times, says an active discussion of the construction of the railway between the countries. The first step on the road to the implementation of the project should be the path from Moscow to Kazan. The beginning of the route is planned to be arranged in Beijing, then the road will pass through such cities as Khabarovsk and Ulan-Bator, Irkutsk and Astana, Yekaterinburg. The last destination will be Moscow. The finished high-speed railway will be three times longer than the current high-speed highway between Beijing and Guangzhou. Time travel between cities after the project will be not six days, but only two. Today, between the two countries' capitals, only two trains run within a week. The route was opened in 1954. The Trans-Siberian Railway is considered to be the longest in the world. It stretched from Moscow to Vladivostok. It crosses 400 stations, and its length is 9288 kilometers.

The first difficulties and the first cardinal steps

High-speed train Beijing-Moscow in the short term is unlikely to go on its route. As mentioned above, the first stage of the project, which in the future will connect the territories of the two states, should be the Moscow-Kazan road, the provisional value of which was too high for Russia. To attract investors, Gazprombank conducted a road show with a total cost of 1.06 trillion rubles in such cities as Beijing and Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai. According to preliminary information, a number of meetings have already taken place with potential partners around the world:

• May 14 - in Singapore.
• May 15 - in Shanghai.
• May 16 - in Beijing.

In the future, the visit of representatives of the Gazprom bank to Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, is being considered. According to representatives of Russian Railways, meetings with Asian investors were planned for several months. The involvement of the East is due to severe sanctions from the West. In the message from "Snedere" it was said that the Moscow-Beijing high-speed road will not be built in the next few years. The implementation of the first part of the project, BCM between Moscow and Kazan, can be postponed to 2020. This is due to the fact that RZD has not yet managed to find an investor.

The first stage of the project implementation

At the first stage of the project, the state budget of the country and the "Russian Railways" intend to allocate 191.9 billion rubles. Other sections of the route, such as Vladimir-Nizhny Novgorod, Nizhny Novgorod-Cheboksary, Cheboksary-Kazan, are planned to be settled at the expense of concessions. It was reported by the Ministry of Transport on January 29, 2015. For the first time about the project, residents of the region, within the framework of which a high-speed road will be realized, learned only in early 2015. The new route will be laid parallel to the federal highway M-7, known as the "Volga". The composition will make stops. In particular, in Vladimir the station will be located in Sukhodol.

What do the residents of the regions say?

The Moscow-Beijing high-speed railway, on a map that passes through a fairly large section of the territory, has caused a very mixed reaction among people who will have to live with it in the neighborhood. There are worried about the alleged damage that will affect agricultural land, forests and formed stacking. The authorities officially announced that at each site where the construction will be carried out, all activities will be preliminary agreed with the population. One source of information suggests that if it is possible to find a sponsor, the SCM will be opened as early as 2018. The maximum speed of movement along the road will be 400 kilometers per hour, which will shorten the route from Moscow to Kazan from 11 hours to 3.5 hours.

Duties of the parties

The Moscow-Beijing high-speed railway, the scheme of which is theoretically very attractive and profitable, in accordance with the preliminary plans, should begin its work in the period from 2018 to 2020. In the long term, the Chinese side undertakes to provide its technologies for the implementation of the project. The country is ready to take full responsibility for planning and construction. In return for large-scale assistance, China is ready to receive energy from Russia.

Until December 15, 2014, it was planned to develop conditions under which Chinese companies could participate in the project. Information about whether it was possible to arrange an agreement, is still hidden from the public. The right to design the Moscow-Kazan highway project was won by the Russian-Chinese consortium under the management of Mostgiprotrans, with the active participation of OAO Nizhegorodmetroproekt and CREEC (China Railway Eryuan Engineering Group Co. Ltd.). The price of the contract for carrying out this category of work is equal to 20 billion rubles, but without VAT.

Analysts about the project

The Moscow-Beijing high-speed railway project is a very priority and promising project, but this does not prevent analysts from treating him skeptically. They say that the timing of the launch of the SCM in the context of 2018-2020 is unrealistic. According to Alexei Bezborodov, who is the general director of the agency InfraNews, in the next decade the project will not be launched either. The basis for this attitude was the official statement of the representative of RZD that at the moment there is no concrete action plan for the construction of the SCM. There is only a high probability that the Moscow-Kazan road will be extended to Ekaterinburg and beyond.

Who will benefit from the construction of a high-speed road?

The high -speed Moscow-Beijing highway will bring certain advantages not only to Russian Railways, but also to the states as a whole. This is due to the agglomeration effects that will arise as the population moves into the implementation of the project. In the expected future, the high-speed highway should increase by 30-70% GRP in the regions. Additional revenues from the road will correspond to no less than 11 trillion rubles already in the first decade of project operation. This figure was presented by a group of economic institutions headed by the Ministry of Economic Development. If the VSM still appears, only in the territory of one Vladimir region GRP will increase by 38%. This is of the order of plus 84 billion rubles. By 2030, this figure will increase by 58%, or in monetary terms - by 131 billion rubles. In the Nizhny Novgorod region, the expected growth in the economy is 39%, or 252 billion rubles, but by 2030 it should be at least 76%, or 496 billion. Chuvashia is expected to grow by 13%, or 20 billion rubles. By 2025 the leap will be 28%, or 43 billion rubles. In Tatarstan, the expected growth in the economy by 2025 will be 27%, or 274 billion rubles.