MOSCOW, July 1. /TASS/. Russian Railways may receive 8 bln rubles ($144.5 mln) from the budget for Moscow - Kazan High Speed Railway (HSR) engineering. Ministries of Transport and Finance were directed "to provide at least 8 bln rubles ($144.5 mln) in 2016 for the purposes of financing the engineering survey and development of the design documentation in respect of Moscow - Kazan HSR," as stated in the minutes of the meeting chaired by Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich

The length of the HSR between Moscow and Kazan will be about 770 km, with trains to travel along it at the speed of up to 400 kph. Travel time from Moscow to Kazan will be reduced to 3.5 hours from 14 hours currently. The Russian Railways official added that after the route is launched it can be extended onto Beijing and Europe.

As was previously reported by TASS, the contract to design the route has been recently won by a China-Russian consortium composed of Moscow Transportation Engineering Design Institute, Nizhny Novgorod Metro Design and CREEC (China Railway Eryuan Engineering Group Co. Ltd.). The cost of the HSR engineering contract is 20 bln rubles ($361.1 mln) without VAT.