Roads of the Russian Federation, WB report
Three times more expensive
Excerpt from the report: Of the 50 thousand km of federal highways, less than a third are suitable for regulatory requirements. More than half of them do not correspond to the evenness and strength of the coating …
Due to poor coverage, freight transportation costs increase 3 times (motor fuel losses increase, repair costs due to accelerated wear on cars, the delivery period is lengthened), "which leads to an increase in the price of goods transported."
And also WB experts called Russian routes the most expensive. This is due to "lack of competition in the road industry, leakage of funds and corruption." In the report, experts compared the cost of maintaining roads here and in Finland: in 2007, 1 km of roads cost our neighbor 3-5 times cheaper than in Russia!
Wrong
One cannot but listen to the experts from the side, especially after such shocking figures. Employees of the Federal Road Agency (Rosavtodor) began to study, which led to the above conclusions. And it turned out that the analysis was carried out by financiers of the Moscow representative office of the WB, far from the specifics of Russian statistics. And they took data exclusively from open sources. But analytics for them is based on the general reader: they, as a rule, do not detail what is behind this or that figure.
The head of Rosavtodor Anatoly Chabunin called the comparisons made incorrect. The data for Finland are averages - for the entire road network, including federal, regional, and rural roads, as well as ferry crossings. The numbers for the Russian Federation are only those that relate to federal highways, and they are the most expensive in construction and maintenance. If you calculate the average cost of servicing Russian roads of all categories, then it will fall to the “Finnish” level.
And the fact that we spend very little on caring for the road industry is true: the road industry in Russia is financed by less than half of what the regulations require. However, the budget is not able to allocate large amounts.
And more about the correctness of the conclusions (this is already from the author): compare the scale of Finland and the Russian expanses, the history of our economies, technological traditions, real state income per capita.
Roads of the Russian Federation, WB report
Dwellings are also a road
Once the specialists mentioned the sky-high cost of roads, it means they confirmed the existence of an “asphalt” mafia in the country. This “fried” theme pops up and exaggerates regularly. So often that Anatoly Chabunin was tired of answering questions related to her. And relatively recently, a certain foreign, again, publication splashed into the bonfire of a gasoline truck - laid out its calculations. Like, the builders of roads in the Olympic region of Sochi have requested such amounts that with this money you can not only roll the entire coast into asphalt, but also spread it with a thick, thick layer of peanut butter.
In an interview with ZR. RU correspondent, the head of Rosavtodor explained:
- The amateur journalists went head-on: they compared the cost of 1 km of the road taken from statistics in their own country and in Russia. But these cost indicators for us and they are calculated differently. In most countries, this is the price of materials, work - that's all. But here we include the cost of punching tunnels (especially if we are talking about the highlands of Sochi), a very costly thing is shifting communications (dismantling old ones, excavation, buying new materials, route equipment, assembling them, adjusting them). Often, if it is impossible in another way, people have to be relocated from their dwellings (due to which compensation payments or housing construction in new places, payment of property and non-property losses follow).
