Tauris highway in Crimea: features, degree of readiness

When the conversation comes about Crimea over the past few years, many of our fellow citizens have an idea in their head with a significant construction project - the Crimean bridge that connected the peninsula with the Krasnodar Territory. Moreover, far from everyone in the region, not everyone knows that global construction does not end there, because now you also need a land section of the road. It is already under construction and has received the name Tauris, and for the locals it is no less important than a bridge.

Until 2014, the northern route remained the main route for people and cargo to enter the peninsula. There, the entire infrastructure was established long ago, through the Perekop Isthmus there were main roads and railways to the conditional west, and through the bridge over Sivash - the same routes in the conditional direction to the east, where the famous Moscow-Simferopol highway passed. It was the northern trips that were most relevant for the Crimea at all times of its history.

When this state became part of the Russian Empire, it closed the transport system on itself and built railways, which also went north by the shortest route. In the USSR and Ukraine, such logistics also seemed most justified - passenger traffic and cargo transportation were also carried out in this direction.

At all times described, the main traffic flows were collected from different parts of Crimea to Dzhankoy, and from there they were determined with a further direction - either to Kherson and further to the west and north-west, or to Zaporozhye and further to Kharkov, Moscow and other popular destinations.

For this reason, a serious route was needed only from the northern edge of the peninsula to Simferopol - Further, the flow of transport was inevitably divided, and there were enough local roads. Direct communication with the Krasnodar Territory was carried out by ferry, but this was far from the most successful option, because this direction was not in great demand.

To avoid the transit procedure through another state, it was decided to build a bridge connecting the Kuban to the Crimea. It was opened in 2018, but in the end another problem was revealed - the main traffic flows were redirected not to Dzhankoy, but to Kerch, but there was no really serious route here - there was no such need.

The modern project, on which the Tavrida highway is being implemented, was ready in 2016, at that time the estimated cost of its implementation was estimated at 139 billion rubles. It is assumed that part of the road will be built where there were no tracks before, in other cases, a major reconstruction of existing tracks will be carried out. At the beginning of 2017, projects of individual sections of the new highway passed state examination, and in May of that year, the construction of a new facility was launched.

It is assumed that the new route will pass from the eastern Crimea to the southwest of the peninsula through its center. The final points are called Kerch, located directly at the exit from the Crimean bridge, and Sevastopol - a huge port and just one of the two largest cities of the entire peninsula. The route will pass through Simferopol, which is the main air gate of the region and just one of the two largest cities, as well as many smaller cities - for example, Feodosia, Belogorsk and Bakhchisaray.

For convenience, the entire length of the route was divided into eight sections or stages, which may not be commissioned in the order in which they were numbered.

1. It has a duration of 71 kilometers. It is located closest to the Crimean bridge, starting at the roundabout at the exit from it and ending near the village of Primorsky. This is one of the most important parts of the route, since it is a virtually uncontested route. Such a road existed before, but it will be expanded by adding two new lanes.
2. Stretched for 50 kilometers, it passes from the village of Primorsky to the village of Lgovskoye, where it connects with the road to the regional center Belogorsk. This is a new direction - there was no road here before.
3. 36 kilometers long is a reconstruction of the old road. On it you can get from the village of Lgovskoe to the outskirts of Belogorsk, where there is access to the old highway connecting Simferopol and Feodosia.
4. Passes through Zuya and Labor similar to the existing route, reaching the Simferopol bypass. This fragment of the road has a length of 28 kilometers.
5. It is a Simferopol roundabout, which goes around the Crimean capital from the north and west. It runs from the current direction to Feodosia to the current direction to Bakhchisarai and Sevastopol. The length of the bypass is almost 25 kilometers.
6. The plot is the lastrunning through the territory of Crimea as a republic.It stretches from the exit from the Simferopol bypass (near the village of Levadki), duplicating the existing road, to the place where the Bakhchisarai district borders on Sevastopol. This stretch of track has a length of 29 kilometers.
7. It runs through the vicinity of Sevastopol as a city. It starts from the border with the republican Crimea and reaches the junction with the so-called presidential road from Sevastopol to Inkerman. This segment is relatively short, its length is slightly more than 13 kilometers.
8. The last segment is also the shortest - It stretched just 6 kilometers. It involves the reconstruction of the aforementioned presidential road all the way to the Yalta Ring. Despite its short length, this is a very complicated and expensive piece of road - it is located in an area with a developed road network, so additional construction of interchanges, overpasses and a bridge is required.

Most of the current routes were laid several decades ago, when road congestion was less, and too little attention was paid to the needs of an ordinary person compared to state needs. Some aspects of the new Tauris highway make us speak of it as a modern engineering project, which was made following the example of the best German autobahns. Consider key aspects of a finished freeway.

• The length of the road is almost 251 kilometers. On the scale of Russia, this, of course, is not the most impressive project, but for the Crimea it is a contender for the title of construction of the century, because the route crosses the peninsula from end to end.
• Estimated load - up to 39-40 thousand cars daily. For Crimea, with its three-million-strong population, this is already quite impressive, because not every Crimean citizen will travel on the road every day, especially since it does not pass near a number of large settlements in the region.
• The maximum permissible weight of passing vehicles is 70 tons. It is assumed that any heavy trucks can drive across Tauris, because if they do not pass here, then they have nothing to do in Crimea. Asphalt concrete pavement is made with a margin of safety in order to allow all sectors of the economy tied to automobile transport to develop on the peninsula.
• The permitted speed is 120 km / h. In this regard, Tauris threatens to become a unique object on the scale of the post-Soviet space, because there are no full-fledged autobahns, where the speed limit was practically absent, until it really appeared.
• The width of the road is 4 lanes, two in each direction, separated by chippers. Such characteristics are necessary to ensure the passage of the declared 40 thousand cars per day. The chippers do not allow vehicles that have lost control to enter the oncoming lane, so the number of fatal accidents at a high speed should decrease.
• Detour of settlements. An important route will not pass through any city, which allows you to maintain a consistently high speed of traffic and saves local residents from constant noise.
• Lack of intersections and traffic lights. The road is designed so that nothing obstructs the fast movement of cars. The project plans the construction of more than two hundred road objects that help to avoid the formation of a crossroads - these are transport interchanges, overpasses and bridges. The interests of local residents are taken into account - separate viaducts will be created for agricultural machinery. Although the road does not pass through settlements, the need for its pedestrian crossing is still possible in some places - for this purpose, special elevated crossings will be built.
• The expansion of bus stations - in Kerch and Feodosia. With the launch of the Krymsky bridge and the commissioning of the Tauris highway, a significant increase in passenger traffic is expected in a new direction.Simferopol and Sevastopol have a fairly developed infrastructure, most of the smaller cities do not need to expand it - long-distance communication will not directly affect them. It is planned to make large transit hubs from Kerch and Feodosia that can receive long-distance buses.
• Commissioning of all sites - 2020. About the impressiveness of the object speaks at least the fact that its construction takes three years.

The legislation provides for a norm according to which capital construction is not allowed on the site where archaeological research has not been previously conducted. Already, so many findings have gathered that some experts offer at the end of construction to open a special museum, which will be devoted to everything that was found in the process of laying the route. The following finds are included in the portfolio of archaeological finds:

• kilometer-long karst cave near Zuya with the remains of prehistoric animals - they promised to preserve this place and organize a scientific center on its basis;
• the ruins of a military camp dating from the time of the Crimean War (1853–1855) - near Sevastopol;
• a marble statue in which the ancient Greek god Apollo is guessed - at the site of the fortress Mirkemiy;
• Scythian military burial, which even managed to be dated to the middle of the 4th century BC thanks to an amphora - in the bowels of the Sary-Su burial mound.

As mentioned above, the completion date of the entire facility as a whole is planned for 2020. It is impossible to say for sure whether the track will actually be built by that time or not, because unforeseen delays are possible in any situation, and even more so in our conditions. While the construction is progressing according to plan, no significant breakdowns were noted.

At the same time, it makes no sense to wait until the entire route is opened - at least you can get from Kerch to Sevastopol today, even if the route is slightly different from what was planned. In addition, the construction of individual stages is uneven, and at first glance illogical - some pieces in the middle of the route are officially open right now, they will no longer finish or upgrade them. This happens because it was impossible to begin construction directly from the Kerch bridge until it was put into operation, since when leaving it there should have been a platform for the passage of special heavy equipment.

The second and third stages of the Tauris route were officially commissioned on the penultimate day of 2018 - the site was completely completed on the site from the village of Batalny to Belogorsk. In February 2019, a nine-kilometer piece of the new Simferopol bypass was also opened - it connected the villages of Levadki and Dubki, passing from the highway to Bakhchisaray and Sevastopol to the highway to Nikolaevka.

The construction of the highway on the territory of Sevastopol is hardly more than delayed - although there are only two sections with a total length of 20 kilometers, the timing of their completion is still unclear. In December 2018, the project was only ordered for the eighth stage - this means that it has not yet acquired its final form even on paper.

About when the Tauris highway opens in the Crimea, you will learn from the video below.