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Russia mulls over construction of automobile bridge across Bay of Sevastopol

An approximate cost of the bridge construction is 17 million roubles ($484 704)

SEVASTOPOL, April 02. /ITAR-TASS/.  Sevastopol transport companies have appealed to Russian Deputy transport minister Nikolai Asaul on Wednesday, asking to help build an automobile bridge across the Bay of Sevastopol, "which will considerably cut the expenditures on transport in the city," the Sevastopol transport managers said.

The Bay of Sevastopol is a city harbor that includes a series of smaller bays carved into its shores. The Bay of Sevastopol splits the city into the Southern side and the Northern side.

The bay has a long coast line, which compels travelers and traffic go round the bay which is 8 kilometers deep into the shore, entrepreneur Vladimir Vafin told the deputy transport minister. The entrepreneur complained of unreasonable waste of man-hours and fuel. If built the bridge 750 meters long it would enable to economize a huge amount of time and fuel, Vafin said, adding this opinion was shared by all the Sevastopol residents and representatives of transport organizations.

The bridge construction across the Bay of Sevastopol might be included in one of Russia's federal programs, the deputy minister said.

"We should study the proposals and analyze where an optimal location of the bridge should be and calculate a potential number of passengers who might be transported across the bridge, the deputy transport minister said. The bridge construction was envisaged in a program for 2011-2015 adopted by the Sevastopol City Council.

The planned allocations to the program were estimated at 80 million Ukrainian Hryvnias (around $8.5 million), but no allocations to the program were ever made from the Ukrainian state budget. An approximate cost of the bridge construction across the Bay of Sevastopol is 17 million roubles ($484 704).