December 4, 2016 the opening ceremony of the Central section of WHSD took place on the cable-stayed bridge over Korabelny Fairway.
Construction works on the objects of the unique project intended for construction and operation of the inner-city highway.
Vladimir Putin attended the ceremony. It was also attended by president and chairman of the management board of VTB Bank Andrey Kostin; plenipotentiary envoy to the Northwestern Federal District Nikolay Tsukanov; the governor of Saint Petersburg Georgy Poltavchenko; deputy minister of Transport of Russia Nikolai Asaul, and head of the Russian Federal Road Transport Agency Roman Starovoit; chairman of Vnesheconombank Sergey Gorkov and the leaderships of the companies involved in the project.
During the opening ceremony CEO of the Northern Capital Highway, LLC Alexey Bnatov and the Western High Speed Diameter, JSC Igor Lukyanov reported the main stages of the project Implementation to the President.
Mr. Putin greeted all the builders and engineers who participated in the construction and thanked them for the work done.
– Friends, I want to thank all of your teams, builders, engineers, and all those who participated in the construction effort. This is a big event not only for St Petersburg, but the entire northwest as well. I think you are well aware of it, because this expressway will connect the city’s business centres, and a huge number of vehicles will be able to bypass the historic centre.
Northern Capital Highway, an infrastructure consortium including VTB Capital and OJSC Gazprombank is implementing a private-public partnership with the city of Saint-Petersburg. The total cost of the Central section is estimated at more than 120 billion rubles.
The highway is the first inner-city tool road with the entire length of 46km. It consists of three parts connecting the Northern, Central and Southern parts of St Petersburg.
The opening of the Central Part of WHSD spanning over 12km will make an entire highway operational.
The road will be open to traffic by the end of the current week.
