Chelyabinsk renounced the idea of metro construction

The seventh-largest city in Russia got its only metro tunnel to be finished, but it will be used for other purposes than transportation. That was decided at the meeting on the General Plan of Chelyabinsk.

Челябинск

Chelyabinsk. Source: rossija.info

According to Olga Nikitina, the head of the prospective development department of the City Planning and Architecture Committee of Chelyabinsk, the tunnel between two planned metro stations Torgovyi Centr and Prospect Pobedy will be completed, but the trains will never enter it. The construction of the first section of the Chelyabinsk metro with a total length of 5.7 km started about 30 years ago. It was never completed, the existing tunnel requires technical maintenance, and conservation, due to the lack of funding to continue metro construction.

The talks about the payback of the metro project may ve relevant with traffic more than 70 thousand passengers per hour. For the small section, this number is unreachable. And even four planned stations will not return the investment, because they will not help with the transportation issues of the city and will not connect the city parts properly.

“Chelyabinsk’s metro is a dream we lived and left. Thirty years is a long term that is enough to realize we will not have it”, – Olga Nikitina commented.

Possibly, the tunnel will become a part of the light-rail system. The techno-economic feasibility study will impact the final decision. A drilling-and-blasting method was used for the construction in 2004, the TBM manufactured by Canadian company Lovat started working there. In 2007, due to the lack of funding, the construction stopped.  The TBM made about 1.2 km.

Tell us about our article to your friends,
sharing a link in a social network

Comments (0)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I hereby confirm that I am familiar with the privacy policy of
and agree to the processing of personal data. Read more

Наверх