MOSCOW, November 8. /TASS/. The German Initiative consortium (includes Siemens, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Bahn and other companies) is ready to co-finance the construction of the Moscow-Kazan high speed railroad for the amount of about €2.7 bln, First Vice President of Russian Railways Alexander Misharin said in an interview with TASS.
"Now we speak about investments of about €2.7 bln," he said.
Misharin said that the terms of the financing should be fixed in an intergovernmental agreement and the consortium had promised to provide the draft document before November 10.
Earlier the German Initiative consortium proposed to finance the high speed railroad project for the sum of €2 bln.
The total cost of the Moscow-Kazan high-speed railway line is estimated at 1.068 trillion rubles ($16.8 bln). The Moscow-Kazan section may later be extended to China, connecting the two countries across Kazakhstan. According to the Russian Railways, the length of Moscow-Beijing railroad will be 7769 km, travel time - 32.8 hours (four times faster compared to current 130.4 hours). The average annual passenger traffic is estimated at 195 mln people.
The Moscow-Kazan High Speed Railway’s total length will stand at around 770 kilometers. Trains may go at a speed of 350-400 kilometers per hour, and the time en route between the two cities could be 3-3.5 hours against the current 14 hours.