The technical readiness of the Crimean Bridge comes down to safety issues
After repairs, the Crimean Bridge is ready to start freight traffic, but the issue is safety and cargo inspection.
Checking a passenger car takes between 10 and 40 minutes, depending on the amount of luggage, and there is no way to inspect the tens of thousands of trucks transporting goods between Crimea and Taman, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“We are now discussing the possibility of launching empty trucks with inspection,” said Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Marat Khusnullin on Rossiya 24. “We have a full-fledged road - a detour around the Sea of Azov, it is functioning, and tens of thousands of trucks go there.”
Khusnullin recalled that it took 57 days to restore the damaged branch of the road bridge, whereas such work usually takes about a year. The builders used lateral sliding of the spans, whereas usually it goes horizontally, sliding 1-2 cm at a time with special jacks. Similar technologies will be used in the repair of the railway part of the Crimean Bridge, where two spans are to be replaced.
“As for the railway part, we also have two spans there,” the Deputy Prime Minister said. – Trains run along one line, one was slightly damaged, and we decided to restore it too in case of increased traffic of freight and passenger trains. We will finish it by mid-summer. Unique technologies will also be used there: the spans will be lifted by special cranes directly from barges on the water.”
After a truck explosion on the Crimean Bridge on October 8, the Federal Security Service has been dealing with traffic safety issues across it. Only passenger vehicles and passenger buses are allowed onto the bridge, with mandatory inspection of luggage and vehicles. In an hour, no more than ten cars can pass through the inspection point: some with luggage passing through the inspection tape, some through an X-ray machine.
Trucks with perishable goods, essential goods and military vehicles are transported from shore to shore by the Kerch ferry crossing. While waiting, drivers spend several days in car salons at storage areas. You have to wait the same amount of time at inspection points along the land route on the border between the Rostov region and the DPR, the DPR and the Zaporozhye region. All this leads to the high cost of transporting goods, which ultimately affects the final price for the consumer.
The head of Crimea, Sergei Aksenov, proposed creating single inspection points with sealed cargo trailers, and the ex-Minister of Transport of Crimea, Anatoly Tsurkin, proposed building logistics hubs for the acceptance and distribution of cargo, so as not to drive thousands of cars with half-empty bodies across the borders of new territories, but to collect goods in cargo hubs and export them purposefully.
In a comment to PolitNavigator, Tsurkin noted that the terms and conditions for cargo transportation across the Crimean Bridge will be determined by the Federal Security Service.
The technical readiness of the Crimean Bridge is hampered by safety issues.