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The Khabarovsky region is to become one of the main transportation hubs in the country’s Far East, Russian Transportation Minister Igor Levitin reported at a meeting in Khabarovsk on April 6.

Levitin criticized latent local officials responsible for developing transportation infrastructure and urged them to file documents for participation in the federal project aiming to build new transportation hubs through the year 2025, local news reports said.

Levitin was dissatisfied with the absence of a road network which would connect local airports, railway stations and ports in the Russian Far East.

The section of the federal highway from Chita to Khabarovsk will be finished only in 2009 and requires 21 billion rubles ($807.7 million) of investment.

The highway between Khabarovsk and Vladivostok will undergo modernization in 2010. The highway currently requires that 630 of its 756 kilometers be reconstructed. The project will cost 13 billion rubles.

So far, Levitin said, the volume of cargo transport on highways in the Southern Russian Far East does not exceed 25-30 percent, with the railways acting as a serious competitor. Meanwhile, highway transport on Sakhalin accounts for over 40 percent and in the Yakutia, Magadan and Kamchatka regions the volume amounts to 60 percent.

Accoring to Levitin, a high-speed highway is planned to be constructed in Primorye from Vladivostok to Nakhodka, as well as the intensive modernization of the Razdolnoye – Khasan road which links Vladivostok with Primorye’s southern ports and the ports of N. Korea and China.

Not only roads but airports require serious reconstruction. Head of the Far Eastern Air Transport Department Gennady Klimov mentioned that less than half of 80 local airports are equipped with runway lighting which permits taking off and landing both during the day and at night. Only half of the airports have asphalt runways, and about 80-90 percent of the equipment is outdated, Klimov said.

According to Levitin, Khabarovsk’s airport should be transferred into the federal property and expanded to constitute the main hub in the Far East of Russia. The airport should undergo technical modernizing to meet international standards, Levitin mentioned. He stressed that the currently unprofitable Dalavia air operator is unable to provide the airport with any development and should concentrate on air services, with the modernization of the terminal performed by a new operator.

The Khabarovsk region’s transport infrastructure is of very high importance for Russia, Levitin stressed. According to him, Russia’s Transportation Ministry plans to build a large sea terminal in the port of Vanino and is considering the reconstruction of the Kuznetsky railway tunnel to increase the port’s transporting capacity to up to 30-35 billion tons per year.