The estimated cost of building the Tavrida expressway in Crimea has unexpectedly risen by 43 billion rubles — to 128 billion rubles.
The updated figures were announced by Crimea’s head, Sergei Aksyonov. The road is being built entirely with regional budget funds and is supposed to open together with the Kerch Bridge. The estimated cost of building the Tavrida highway in Crimea has risen by 43 billion rubles, reaching 128 billion rubles. The new figures were given by Crimea’s head, Sergei Aksyonov, in an interview with RIA Novosti. The road will be built with public funds and is expected to open in full together with the Crimean Bridge — at the end of 2018. Full responsibility for the project has been assigned to the republic’s government. “The construction contractors are known; there are not many companies capable of building a road in two years and absorbing 128 billion rubles. The project is still in development,” Aksyonov said. Yet as recently as early March, Aksyonov had said that “the four-lane Tavrida road from Kerch to the city of Sevastopol would cost around 85 billion rubles.” http://www.gazeta.ru/auto/2016/06/20_a_8317643.shtml
I think Aksyonov screwed up. If you’re going to pull a twelve-digit number out of thin air, it shouldn’t have been 128 billion, but the other way around — 821 billion.
Well, sure — this is the construction of a road. You hardly ever see roads being built anywhere in the world. Very few companies are capable of building a road and soaking up billions. A unique structure. It will be laid not just anywhere, but on land. A challenge to the world’s engineering genius.
And then there are the sanctions: Obama’s aircraft carriers will block supplies of rebar and crushed stone — what then?
Obviously, a road like this can be said to cost absolutely anything. The patriotic fervor in the Crimean government is such that they could push it all the way to a trillion — after all, they’ll probably need to buy 20 billion rubles’ worth of St. George ribbons (a Russian military-patriotic symbol) alone.