Sea front of Alushta
Every spring Ukrainian motorists look wistfully at the condition of the national roads that are not always available for comfortable passage after temperature drop, snow, black frost and other weather hardships. Crimean roads have never been an exception but things that happened to them after coming of the Russian authorities had shocked the most reckless motorists. At the same time, the Russian authorities report on billons they have already invested into the bottomless holes of the Crimean impassability.
Crimean roads or… trenches
Pitfalls and potholes resemble trenches rather than holes on the highways of the peninsula. Sevastopol’s drives joke sadly saying these aren’t any kind of wholes but trenches that Pravy Sector activists dig at night to capture the legendary hero city. Inhabitants of Kerch suffer because of impassibility of roads the most as the only connection that unites with the “new motherland”, by which juggernauts carry goods in both directions, passes through their city. Of course, road pavement wasn’t designed for such load, that’s why up to half a meter deep potholes on the highway from Simferopol to Kerch do not surprise anyone. The situation is no better in the capital of Crimea: if there were passage problems in the “old town” in the past, then now it became unsafe to drive even in the center of the city.
“I cannot recall such terrible road conditions as there is this year, although I have been driving for 40 years,” Andrei Petrovich says and adds that he virtually hasn’t seen any road repairs within the whole year of the Russian occupation.
“Only the street that leads to Aksebnov’s home has been repaired,” the inhabitant of the capital Dima adds. “It is hard to drive along other streets of the city – the Proletarskaya street (one of the central streets of the city – editor’s note) is completely worn-down, it is impossible to pass through the intersection of Krasnoarmeyskay and Krylova streets, Mayakovskiy, Chekhova and the Kim streets are bumpy as well… It is actually hard to enumerate all of them,” the inhabitant of Simferopol says sadly.
Who is to blame?
The local authorities keep blaming Ukraine in everything with gusto saying that it has been using Crimean roads mercilessly without investing a dime for 24 years. However, words remain only words and facts are stubborn.
At least, reconstruction of the highways from Kharkov to Simferopol (538-548 km), from Simferopol to Yalta (about 20 km) was performed, road diversions around Inkerman and partially around Simferopol were built under Ukrainian authorities. It is even without considering construction and repairs of secondary roads.
Roads in the capital of Crimea
Speaking about funding, the Russian “manna” does not look to be from heaven. According to the Ukrainian State Highways Agency, 213 million hryvnyas (17.5 million dollars with the exchange rate at the time) have been allocated for the Crimean roads in 2013. 1.6 million (205 thousand dollars) of this sum have been allocated for the major repairs and 197 million ($24.6 million dollars) – for the minor repairs and maintenance. In addition to those funds, another 134.2 million hryvnyas or 16 million dollars have been received by means of credits. In total, 34.3 million dollars have been allocated for the roads of the peninsula.
In 2014, Russia planned to allocate 3.8 billion rubles for reconstruction of Crimean roads (not including Sevastopol), approximately 2.3 billion rubles (about 51 million dollars) of which were spent and that is 16 million more than it was allocated prior by the Ukrainian authorities. However, providing the fact that the construction cost of 1kilometer of a road is 10 million dollars in Russia, whereas in Ukraine it is 5 million dollars, then it would be possible to construct 5 kilometers of road in Russian prices and almost 7 in the Ukrainian case. At the same time, it was still possible to drive along these roads under the Ukrainian authorities and there are problems doing so under the Russian ones.
Russian projects and schemes
4.185 billion rubles (approximately 76 million dollars) have been allocated for maintenance of Crimean roads in 2015. 1.284 billion rubles from these funds are allocated for the major construction, 1.7 – for the minor repairs and 997.9 million rubles – for their maintenance. Whereas the major repairs are implied only for the roads in the south shore of Crimea – it is 620 million rubles in total, or 50% from the whole sum.
At the same time, not the major but only minor patching repairs are provided for the longsuffering Kerch highway, on which 82% of all the funds are allocated under this article. It remains a riddle how all the other Crimean roads will be repaired for the remaining 18 %. It looks like they are going to fill holes with wood dust as it’s already done in Evpatoria.
City roads: matter of money, contractors and quality
Roads after repairs in Sevastopol
The situation with city road conditions looks even gloomier: it is virtually impossible to drive on some of them. Sevastopol motorists even organized a meeting on this issue and demanded of the authorities of the city to put things right. They agreed and adopted an ambitious road construction and repairs program at a cost of 26 billion rubles for 2015-2020, according to which the city “authorities” are going to repair 57 kilometers of roads… out of 437 kilometers. It is planned to repair 30 streets in the legendary city itself in 2015. However, results of the first repairs already shocked local inhabitants: road metal didn’t last even for two (!!!) days and had gradually migrated to the curbs. If other Crimean roads are repaired following the same technologies, one won’t drive far on them.
Lacking funds in the city budget, the authorities of Kerch sent a messenger with a kowtow to Moscow, where they were promised to allocate 250 million rubles (they asked for 400) from the federal treasury.
Considering the proximity to the republican budget, the authorities of the Crimean capital still cannot come up with sums, terms, and streets liable for reconstruction.
In particular, it is still not clear how much of public funds are allocated for reconstruction of the city streets roadway: either 375 or 500 million rubles. Recently, the Crimean “prime-minister” promised a billion for reconstruction of 200 Simferopol streets. However, by all these immense sums, the planned major reconstruction of Lesya Ukrainka and General Vasilyev streets was changed for the patching repairs for some reasons. The situation isn’t clear with terms as well: one day they say that roads of the capital are already being repaired, the other day they say repairs will start tomorrow, and then they say that all the works will be done by June, then by July or even by October. The whole this “confusion of evidences” was suddenly easily explained just by the decree of the local authorities: in consideration of importance and urgency of the road reconstruction of the capital, Aksenov allowed to choose contractors without holding a tender process. The Simferopol “mayor” in his turn promised to involve non-Crimean companies that, in his words, approved themselves in Russia. So, soon Moscow, Krasnodar or other companies, which are going to be chosen in accordance to personal preferences of the Crimean authorities and sums of “throwbacks” they can offer, will appear on the streets of the Crimean capital.
Russian authorities were very generous when giving promises, but they do not hurry to fulfill them and it is understandable, because “it is never long that comes at last”. But in case with Crimea, it seems one would need to wait very long. However, it gets more dangerous to drive on impassible roads of Crimea.
