Govt may approve Moscow-St Pete speed railway design May–Jun

MOSCOW, Apr 25 (PRIME) -- The Russian government plans to approve design of a Moscow–St. Petersburg high-speed railway in May–June, Deputy Prime Minister Maxim Akimov told reporters on Thursday.

“We plan to approve the high-speed railway project’s design finally in May–June. I would like to reiterate that it is not about cancelling something, it is only about the order of implementation of the projects,” he said.

Russian Railways already made preliminary estimates of the project’s cost and submitted them to the government, he said.

Localization of production of high-speed trains in Russian will be viable only if two high-speed railway roads, the Moscow–St. Petersburg and Moscow–Kazan rails, are built, he added.

Russia currently has no high-speed railways and does not produce high-speed trains. The Moscow–Kazan railway was to become Russia’s first high speed railway.

Russian Railways has been working on the project for several years, but President Vladimir Putin approved development of the Moscow–St. Petersburg railway as most economically feasible.

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