Light rail is in an intermediate position between the conventional metro, which everyone has long been accustomed to, and light rail transport systems. Like the classic subway, it is completely isolated from street transport. Light metro appeared in the Moscow region about 12 years ago, when the Butovskaya line was built, which at one time successfully connected the final section of the Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya line with South Butovo.
What are the main differences?
The light metro line is usually built on the surface or located on special flyovers. For convenience, interchange nodes in large cities are arranged in tunnel sections. Light metro trains include a small number of cars (from two to five). LRT stations are shorter and located in the open air.
Despite all the high cost, such a transport system costs 4-5 times cheaper than the classic version. That is why the light metro in the Moscow region is the most promising direction for solving the transport problems of the capital region.
Future plans
According to the governor of the Moscow region, the issue of creating a light metro in the Moscow region should soonenter a new phase of development. Given the enormous strategic importance, design work on the new branch can be carried out throughout the current year.
It will not be so easy to turn your plans into reality. To date, the construction of new lines only in terms of developing a general scheme and concept requires investments in the amount of 150 million rubles.
Why is this needed?
Where will this grand transport project be implemented? The thing is that the construction of the light metro in a short period has moved from the sphere of rather vague promising directions for the development of transport near Moscow to the zone of really implemented projects. The Moscow region is already so stuck in endless traffic jams that the need for organizing new types of urban transport has become very obvious.
It is necessary to ensure the possibility of guaranteed and unhindered movement between different settlements of the Moscow region for a strictly standardized period of time. Only the light metro in the Moscow region can cope with this task. Any resident of Moscow and the region is well aware of the endless lines of cars and buses that in the morning, like a river stream, are constantly moving towards the capital. Toward evening, the direction changes to the opposite. And everything seems to be fine, but only until the slightest failure occurs. Then this turbulent river instantly turns into a stagnant swamp, which cannot be left.seems possible until it starts to move on its own. As a result, much more time is spent on the road than originally planned, plus a spoiled mood and unrealized opportunities.
How do people move within the Moscow region at present?
Specialists in the field of transport have long paid attention to the peculiarities of passenger traffic on the Moscow Ring Road. It turned out that about 40% of cars use this route to travel between settlements located in the near Moscow region.
There are simply no alternative options for establishing a normal transport connection. The light metro scheme will be built in such a way that the existing shortcoming is fully filled. Any transport system must strike a balance between urban public transport and private transport. In other words, every resident should have the right to choose whether to use their own car today or take the subway for business.
What is planned to be built in the near future?
Light metro lines will run parallel to existing railway lines and thus complement the surface rail infrastructure. By and large, they will have nothing to do with the metro. The first step is to build a light metro line to Khimki (through the left bank). Light metro will come to Odintsovo via Nemchinovka. Further plans are to get to Zheleznodorozhny and Pushkino.
All Moscow airports, according to long-term plans, should be connected by new transport lines. In this case, the train traffic interval will be no more than 7 minutes (with a reduction in peak hours to 4 minutes).
The geography of the cities near Moscow, where the new transport will become available, is very diverse. This is where the light metro will be available: Balashikha, Reutov, Mytishchi, Krasnogorsk, Vidnoye. In addition to the already mentioned settlements, the final stops are planned in Kryukovo, Lyubertsy, Domodedovo, Podolsk, Nakhabino, Sheremetyevskaya.
At the moment, the situation is such that freight trains are forced to get along on the same railway lines with passenger trains, commuter trains and aeroexpresses. The implementation of the light metro project will make it possible to separate these traffic flows. The task is to ensure that any passenger is not tied to any schedule. Arriving at the station at any time, he must be one hundred percent sure that the waiting time for the train towards Moscow will not exceed 6-7 minutes.
Along with the large-scale project, which is planned to be implemented in the Moscow region, the construction of small transport systems of high-speed transport is planned in some territories. These areas include the Shcherbinka - Bobrovo - Drozhzhino - Rastorguevo line, where the population is rapidly reaching 145 thousand people. In order to achieve the maximum reduction in the load on the local road system, a decision was made to organize the construction of an off-street expresswaytransport system.
Long view
Ideally, the light metro should act as an effective integrator of the transport system of the entire region near Moscow into the transport system of the capital. The ultimate goal of this project should be the construction of the so-called chord lines, which should gradually close into a giant railway ring and cover the entire Moscow region. It will be easy to get from Domodedovo to Odintsovo or Ramenskoye along such a transport line.
In what form the project "Light metro - Moscow and the Moscow Region" will be implemented, they do not know for sure yet. Considering that in Russia the railway tracks are adapted for any type of transport, in the future we may see a monorail, a railway, and a high-speed off-street tram.
Will it be that easy?
The construction of light metro lines entails quite large-scale transformations in the layout of highways and urban infrastructure. At the very least, it will be necessary to reconstruct up to 30 pedestrian crossings and build about the same number from scratch. This is necessary to solve the issue of safe movement of pedestrians through the railway tracks.
Next, you need to think about the fight against the noise that trains make. Noise isolation of transport lines will be one of the primary tasks, as moving trains create additional noise load on city streets.
Probably, one cannot do without building new road junctions or moving them tonew places. In some areas, a simple upgrade may be sufficient. In most cases, the urban landscape will noticeably change.
In a word, such a large-scale construction generates a lot of overhead costs, which greatly affects the timing and total cost of construction work.
Some information in numbers
As a result, the new transport system will have a total length of lines of at least 200 km. 48 new stations are to be built. At least 57 new overpasses will need to be built to equip the new metro lines. In order to provide convenient transfers to suburban trains and regular metro, it is planned to build more than 200 intercepting parking lots, which will accommodate up to 80,000 cars. The number of trains running on the new lines will be at least 120.
The cost of implementing the program for the construction of light metro will be more than 230 billion rubles. Financing will be provided by Russian Railways jointly with the federal and regional budgets. The implementation of the light metro project will almost double passenger traffic, by 2020 it will amount to at least 1 billion people.
More about new projects
The project of the high-speed transport system "Strela" has been developed. Its task is to connect the Khimki residential area with the Planernaya metro station. The length of this high-speed line is 7.2 km.
Who will implement the plan?
The authorities of the region have already received cooperation agreement from a number of well-known firms. Siemens has already officially taken an interest in this idea. This company has vast experience and established practice in the field of consulting on the organization of modern transport systems, the construction of railway lines, infrastructure facilities and the creation of rolling stock. But the light metro in the Moscow region is also open to Russian manufacturers, who will definitely become participants in the grandiose project. It does not matter whether they will cooperate with foreign companies or act independently. The authorities of the region pay special attention to the issue of creating the necessary production facilities in the Moscow region, capable of mastering the production of modern rolling stock for a new transport project.
How real is it?
By and large, when deciding to organize a practically new type of transport system, the leadership of the Moscow Region is aiming at quite serious heights. At the same time, the new, as usual, is already drawn to the old. For the population of the Moscow region, the solution of the transport problem by any means will be a joy, since during peak hours passenger traffic increases to such an extent that commuter trains simply “burst”.
What will be the fate of these grandiose plans is unknown. Will the dreams of ordinary passengers come true? Will the light metro come to Odintsovo or Ramenskoye? Or maybe it will again be some kind of high-speed tram? After all, at one time a lot was said about this type of transport in the direction of Balashikha. The length of the route, and the proposed stops, and the cost of construction work were called, but in the end everythingleft in original condition.
