Big Almaty Ring Road to be built by the end of 2015

Big Almaty Ring Road will be completed by 2015, Tengrinews.kz reports. According to transport authorities, it will keep the cars and trucks transiting through Almaty out of the city, eliminate traffic jams and improve the city's environment. Construction of the road will cover 3 regions of Almaty oblast. “Over 20-25 thousand transit cars pass through Almaty every day. The purpose of the Ring Road is to ease the pressure on Almaty streets,” Director of Almaty Department of Roads Yerzhan Zhassybayev said. “Implementation of the project was delayed several times because of lack of funding. The tender will be announced in 2012 and the road will be construction by the end of 2015,” he added. The press-service of Kazakhstan Ministry of Transport and Communications said that the area of land to be used for this project is 761 hectares that cost 18.5 billion tenge ($126 million). 119 hectares of land was bought in 2007 for 3.7 billion tenge ($25 million). No other lands were bought or the road since then. Transport and Communications Ministry and Almaty oblast administration have already restarted evaluations to buy the lands. The total cost of the project is estimated at 79.5 billion tenge ($541 million). The road will be 70km long. It will be large enough for 40 thousand cars per day to pass through. “It will take only 20 minutes to get from Kaskelen to Talgar along this Ring Road,” Zhassybayev said. “Besides, it will be comfortable for cargo trucks going from China to Europe.” In May 2011 Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev instructed the Ministry of Transport and Communications to construct the Big Almaty Ring Road and resolve the problem of traffic jams in the city. The President noted that traffic issues should be given a package solution. He called to study the experience of large cities and see how Paris is solving transport logistics problems and how London is dealing with pollution and overloaded streets. By Roza Yessenkulova