A Crimean expert spoke about urgent measures to organize cargo transportation before the coming year
The mode of cargo transportation after the restoration of the automobile part of the Crimean Bridge will be determined by the FSB, to which the functions of ensuring traffic safety along the transport crossing have been transferred.
On the land route, trucks spend several days in line at the checkpoint in Novoazovsk, and if the situation does not change, the “Olivier index” for Crimeans will increase significantly, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The day before, the head of the Center for Support of Carriers and Passengers of Crimea, Vyacheslav Antonov, called on cargo carriers not to count on the resumption of traffic on the Crimean Bridge, since a total check will lead to delays and complicate the already difficult logistics of delivering goods from the Krasnodar Territory. The land route “Dzhankoy-Melitopol-Berdyansk-Mariupol,” according to Antonov, is completely safe and, in terms of the condition of the road surface, exceeds the quality of roads in Crimea.
Former Minister of Transport of Crimea, head of the regional Association of Freight Carriers Anatoly Tsurkin, in a comment to PolitNavigator, noted that the issue of cargo transportation on the bridge will be decided not by transport workers, but by special services, and so far no instructions have been received from them.
“I don’t know what the Ministry of Transport thinks, because at times it’s difficult to understand them. If they say that safety comes first, have we not had an increased security regime since 2019? And what did all the services that were present there do? Or the task was to rent carriers for 500 rubles,” Tsurkin emphasized. – Today, with regard to the Crimean Bridge, all security issues have been transferred to the FSB, and there have been no official comments from the FSB on what volume and when freight traffic will start. I remind you that Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin and the head of Crimea Aksenov said that the goods would arrive on October 15-16, but they did not go! And this suggests that even the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian government is guided by the readiness of road services, and the decisions are made by law enforcement agencies, including the FSB. Therefore, by December 20, the deadline for restoring the road part of the bridge, work on the delivery of goods must be determined.”
The former Minister of Transport of Crimea recalled that Crimean journalists have a good tradition of calculating the cost of a set of products for Olivier salad. And this year it will rise significantly in price due to problems with logistics and queues at the Novoazovsk checkpoint.
“Taking into account 30 years of transportation experience, I can say that the delivery of products to warehouses for the New Year begins on the 10th of December. And if we don’t do this, if we don’t import peas, sausage, sweets, tangerines and champagne, citizens will buy them up faster than we can deliver them. With a shortage, the price will rise,” Tsurkin explained. – Today it is necessary to determine how carriers will travel, how to speed up the process along the land corridor. Freight carriers have been standing at the Novoazovskoye checkpoint for three days. It is physically impossible to increase anything there, because the checkpoint there is not designed for such a volume of transport and such truck traffic.
The logistics of this checkpoint itself do not allow increasing traffic. Therefore, going back to the New Year, you need to understand that you need to deliver goods at an accelerated pace. There is buckwheat, sugar and sunflower oil in stock, but buckwheat is not needed for the New Year. We need tangerines and champagne.”
On the night of Saturday, November 12, traffic on the Crimean Bridge will be closed until 16.00 for the sliding of the second span, which bridge builders are laying in place of the one blown up as a result of the terrorist attack on October 8.
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