Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has arrived in Novosibirsk for a working visit, where he is going to chair a conference on a draft transport strategy of Russia for the period ending in 2030, to visit the Siberian Transport University and to attend the opening of the traffic on the section of the Northern Highway, which by-passes Novosibirsk, Itar-Tass reports.
A programme of the prime minister’s stay in Novosibirsk includes as well a visit to a public office of the United Russia Party, which is headed by Putin, and a visit to a local branch of Alfa Bank.
The Siberian Transport University is an educational establishment for training transport specialists, where some 11,000 students are educated at a time. The University has four branches. Its research basis permits to re-train annually some 4,000 transport engineers. An innovation centre for the design and examination of transport projects has been opened at the University.
The section of the Northern Highway by-passing Novosibirsk, which includes a bridge across the Ob River, is the largest facility in the regional road network. The building of the section was started in 1999 as part of the special federal programme “Modernization of Russia’s transport system for 2002-2010.”
At present the federal highway goes across the city, which hampers the traffic of transit vehicles and worsens the ecological situation in Novosibirsk. The federal highway is the only automobile road connecting the European part of Russia with 23 regions in the eastern part of the country. A 4,250-metres-long section of the highway with two bridges, whose total length is one kilometre, will be put into effect on Wednesday.
