Russian road project faces delay

Russia’s Sochi highway project will not now be completed by 2024. The original plan was to build a 119.km new route to replace the existing A147 route that connects Dzhubga with Sochi. Because of the challenging terrain, this project to build a new four lane highway without the twists and turns of the existing route would have been extremely costly, with a pricetag of as much as US$18 billion. However the project has now been downgraded as being of a lesser priority than other Russian road projects ongoing at present. As such, it will be delayed and no new completion date has been revealed. Nor is it clear whether the planned (and costly) four lane highway design, complete with cuttings, bridges and tunnel stretches, will still be utilised.