Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed Executive Order On National Goals and Strategic Objectives of the Russian Federation through to 2024. In particular, the document includes instructions to the Government on the development of transport corridors, Northern Sea Route and inland water transport.
The Government was instructed, based on the spatial development strategy of the Russian Federation, to develop, with the participation of the regional governments a comprehensive plan for upgrading and expanding core infrastructure, to be approved by October 1, 2018, which addresses the following goals by 2024:
developing East-West and North-South transport corridors for carrying goods, including by way of:
building and upgrading Russian sections of motorways that are part of the Europe-Western China international transport route;
increasing the capacity of Russian seaports, including the ports of the Far East, Northwestern, Volga-Caspian and Azov-Black Sea basins;
developing the Northern Sea Route and increasing its cargo traffic up to 80 million tonnes;
reducing the time to ship containers by rail, in particular from the Russian Far East to Russia’s western border, down to seven days, and quadrupling the volume of transit container traffic by rail;
creating nodal cargo multimodal transport and logistics centres;
increasing the throughput capacity of the Baikal-Amur and Trans-Siberian railways by 50 percent to 180 million tonnes;
increasing the capacity of railway approaches to the seaports of the Azov-Black Sea basin.