A conductor makes the traditional Russian offering of bread and salt at the launch of the high-speed train between Rostov-on-Don and Mineralniye Vody on March 30, 2004.
Photo: Vasily Deryugin
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Officials Descend on Military Aerodrome
// A Large Transport Hub Planned for Rostov Oblast
The Rostov regional authorities and the Ministry of Transportation have begun the development of a project to create a new airport for the region that will serve 8-12 million passengers annually. For comparison, in 2005 Russian airlines carried 35.1 million passengers. Construction on the project is planned for the site of a former military aerodrome in Bataisk, a suburb of Rostov-on-Don, using investment funds to cover the project's estimated $1.5 billion cost. Plans for the project are expected to be completed by 2007.
According to Kommersant's sources, the initiative to build a new airport comes from the region's governor, Vladimir Chub, and from the presidential representation in the southern federal region. The general director of the firm that runs Rostov-on-Don's current airport, Gennady Evstafiev, was asked by the governor to order that pre-project research be carried out for the construction of the new airport.
Experts are divided on the questions of Rostov-on-Don's potential as an air hub and the necessity of building a new airport. General director Mikhail Kritsky of Aeroflot-Don, which is based in the city, believes that the maximum number of passengers that the current airport can serve is 1.5 million annually, though only 679,970 passed through last year. Still, he concedes that the regional population is growing, possibly by up to twofold over the next six or seven years, which will lead to increased traffic through the airport.
Sources in the airline company Sibir, which runs regular flights from Moscow to Rostov-on-Don, note that demand for the route is continuously increasing. Other experts, however, claim that Rostov-on-Don has little potential to attract large numbers of passengers.
Sergey Ryzhkin and Sergey Ivanov (Rostov-on-Don)
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 27, 2006
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