vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #549 / Social life / Reading article...

The long-discussed project of the grandiose bridge, planned over the Zolotoy Rog (Golden Horn) Bay may link Vladivostok’s downtown with one of its remote residential districts in three years time. This turns out to be a commercial project aimed at ‘non-economic goals’ rather than towards social problems in the city, the project developers revealed at the recent public hearings.

The hearings held in the city’s Neptune cinema hall on December 14 left the impression of an utter formality for both project developers and officials from Primorye and Vladivostok’s administrations, who shared the project’s details with the approximately 200 attending residents.

The project, estimated at around nine billion rubles ($341 million) to be financed from Russia’s investment fund, intends to build a 737-meter long bridge rising about 70 meters above the Zolotoy Rog Bay. The overpass will become Russia’s first large-span bridge, and, after the completion of construction expected in the year 2010, will be the fifth of its kind in the world.

The idea to construct a bridge over the city bay was introduced in Vladivostok’s development plan in 1961 but was soon lost in the papers. In 1998, a proposal to construct a pontoon-bridge was proposed by a group of local architects and also did not reach fruition.

The current project is being developed by four companies including St. Petersburg’s Lengiprotrans and Giprostroimost companies, Primorye’s Primorgrazhdanproyekt and German company Leonhardt, Andra and Partners, one of the world’s best-known designers of major bridges.

According to Chief Designer of Lengiprotrans Gennady Gulko, the specialists considered five variants of the project, with a design based on the cable-stayed type finally approved. The construction is projected to begin in fall 2007. The presumably six-lane toll bridge is planned to join Kalininskaya Street in the Churkin residential district to the tunnel near the downtown funicular and then Nekrasovskaya or Vsevoloda Sibirtseva Street.

However, to dispel the speculations of Vladivostok residents, as well as the previously voiced far-fetched statement about the city becoming ‘the Russian San-Francisco’, the developers made it clear that the project is aimed primarily towards accommodating the 2012 APEC Forum which allegedly may take place in Vladivostok.

The bridge, they said, is proposed to serve as part of a highway from Khabarovsk to Vladivostok which will finally link to the city’s Russky island, where a large administrative and cultural complex is planned to be built if Vladivostok is chosen as the APEC host.

“The project of the bridge is not aimed at eliminating traffic issues in Vladivostok,” stated Valentin Anikeyev, Primorye’s honored architect and professor at Far Eastern Technical University. Due to the bridge’s technical characteristics, neither public transportation nor pedestrians will be permitted on the bridge, he emphasized.

Besides, Anikeyev said, Vladivostok with its population of 650,000 could never manage such a high-flying project, due to its huge expenditure and non-profitability. “The city’s finances are not enough to accomplish this,” he noted.

Currently, the developers are wrapping up the initial stages of the feasibility study, with the project’s overall estimated plan and budget to be completed in February 2007. At this point, the developers will begin filing the required documents.

Regardless, the city will surely only benefit from the project, which will at least slightly relieve the downtown area of its heavy traffic resulting from large amounts of cars and narrow roads. The other advantage of the project is, of course, improving the city’s tourist image, although the idea of Vladivostok becoming a tourist haven in the near future is still as vague as the possibility of the city’s hosting the 2012 APEC.