In an interview with "BUSINESS Online", a well-known economist Mikhail Dmitriev emphasized the importance of the Moscow-Kazan HSR for the development of the Russian domestic market. "If we want that there will be more high-tech and high-productivity enterprises in Kazan, at a minimum, it is necessary to provide conditions required for the infrastructure development," said Mikhail Dmitriev. "The infrastructure of the Kazan agglomeration leaves much to be desired, and we know it well. Moreover, to put it midly, it is far from modern development conditions. The transport connectivity of areas is insufficient, conurbations (polycentric type of an urban agglomeration — editorial comments of BUSINESS On) have not been formed, Kazan, Elabuga and Naberezhnye Chelny should be linked. That is why the Moscow-Kazan high-speed highway is needed. Of course, it should go further and link the neighboring cities, especially Ufa and Perm, with using Lastochka trains to reach the mainline of HSR. All of this is a small part of what is needed to be done."
Mikhail Dmitriev also told about the benefits of high-speed traffic illustrated them by the example of Tver, where Lastochka electric trains were launched in October 2015.
"When Lastochka trains were launched on the October Railway, the travel time from the capital (from the center of Moscow — editorial comments of BUSINESS Online) to Tver was reduced to an hour and a half, which caused a rapid economic growth in the city. It occurred just during the last year, the growth rate of GRP of the Tver Region exceeded the forecasted indicators and the city ranked among the leaders of the Central Federal District. But during the last 5 years it has been among the 20 most slowly developing regions of the Russian Federation. Now this is the only region where the values for properties located near the railroad are rapidly rising," said Mikhail Dmitriev.
“If we look at the Ryazan and Vladimir Regions which have been more successful than the Tver Region, we can see that these regions are experiencing a slowdown of the GRP and a decrease in real estate prices. The improvement of the transport connection with the large agglomeration and creation of adequate transport infrastructure for transportation of people and non-energy goods instead of raw material creates do economic wonders. That is exactly what happened," said Mikhail Dmitriev.
The full interview: https://www.business-gazeta.ru/article/333777
Source: http://www.hsrail.ru/
