Business in the Moscow region: residents of Savvinskaya Sloboda will be forced to pay for the air

The conflict between the residents of the village of Savvinskaya Sloboda and the authorities of the Moscow region, caused by plans to build a toll overpass, flares up with renewed vigor. As a reminder, local residents are protesting against a toll overpass on the Zvenigorod - Kolyubakino - Nesterovo highway, which is supposed to replace the functioning crossing across the Great Ring of the Moscow Railway. The options for bypassing the planned overpass with a length of more than 80 kilometers are associated with an exit to the Novorizhskoe or Minskoe shosse and it is hard to call them alternative.

The main traffic is made by summer residents of nearby villages and residents of few settlements, the intensity of traffic through the existing crossing can be assessed as average, the population does not experience any special problems associated with its work. Separately, it should be noted that the construction of the overpass affects the local cemetery, which causes even more indignation of citizens.

Debriefing around this project for Novye Izvestia was done by a well-known city defender

Maxim Kozlovsky

Recently, the results of a poll of opinions of citizens, conducted by the decision of the Council of Deputies of the Odintsovo urban district, became known. The results are staggering - 93% of respondents support the construction of a toll overpass. According to official information, 12 thousand people took part in the poll, but residents of Zvenigorod, Savvinskaya Sloboda and nearby settlements could not express their opinion, the majority of votes in support of the construction were collected in the city of Odintsovo.

It should be noted that the very form of such a survey is not provided for by law, is not public hearings or public discussions, and the question asked within the framework of the survey is completely manipulative: “Do you support the construction of an overpass on a section of highway 46 OP RZ 46K-1151” Zvenigorod - Kolyubakino - Nesterovo "with the provision of free travel for all citizens with permanent registration in the Odintsovo urban district, citizens-owners of residential, garden houses, apartments, land plots located in the Odintsovo urban district, and their close relatives for a period until January 1 2040? " The authorities are trying once again to falsify real public opinion by such manipulations and deception, to justify their lobbying interests. They themselves have already become so confused that the situation with the overpass is close to absurd.

The authorities of the Odintsovo District of the Moscow Region are really working on the issue of granting the right to free travel to all the specified categories of motorists, however, according to local residents, these categories make up almost 100 percent of the traffic of the Zvenigorod - Kolyubakino - Nesterovo highway, there is practically no transit traffic on this highway, for with the exception of rare trips of residents of Ruza to Zvenigorod. To travel to Moscow, Russian motorists prefer federal highways. At the same time, according to the terms of the concession agreement, the authorities will have to compensate for the lost traffic from the budget for 22 years. And this is billions of rubles.

Even if we assume the feasibility of building an overpass instead of a crossing, believe in the authorities' promises to make travel along the overpass free for local residents and abstract from the problem of the local cemetery, the main question remains: why eliminate the existing crossing?

The answer to this question lies in the answer of the Ministry of Transport and Road Infrastructure of the Moscow Region, where it says in black and white that the move will be a competitor for the private business of the concessionaire. And the entire concession agreement is essentially a legalized scheme for withdrawing funds from the budget. Even with a minimum tariff of 40 rubles for a passenger car, even if we assume that this tariff will not increase for the entire period of the concession agreement, the concessionaire will annually receive 146 million rubles from this facility and it does not matter to him at all - from the treasury or from the pockets of privates citizens. The Moscow region authorities estimate the construction cost of this facility at 800 million rubles and the project will pay off in five to six years. But the construction of a free overpass without the organization of multi-lane toll points could cost the budget 300 million. The lack of funds in the budget of the Moscow region is not an argument, since, according to the current legislation, a constituent entity of the federation has the right to attract a loan from the federal budget.

With the current refinancing rate of the Central Bank, servicing the interest of such a loan would cost the Moscow region no more than 15 million per year and would decrease as the loan is repaid, and by allocating the same 15 million per year to repay the loan itself, the Moscow region government would pay off federal budget in the same 22 years. 146 million per year for the concessionaire or 30 million per year for the federal budget? - What will a corrupt official pursuing the interests of big business choose? And if such overpasses are built to replace each of the hundreds of railway crossings in the Moscow region?

The answer is obvious. Effective managers who have infiltrated all government bodies keep the business out of thin air. Such a business does not need to fight in a competitive environment, increasing the level of accessibility and quality of its services and goods, such a business parasitizes on the country's economy, pulling money from our pockets for imposed services either in the form of direct payments or in the form of taxes that transit to various offshore companies.

For a detailed report on the protests of citizens against the construction of a toll overpass, see here.