The press service of FKU Uprdor Taman reported that traffic has resumed on the road section of the Crimean bridge, which was damaged after the explosion in October. Before that, two of the four lanes were open to traffic.
“On December 5, at 10.50 am, vehicles were transferred to the right side of the road of the Crimean Bridge as part of the restoration works.”
– reported on the website of the contractor managing part of the bridge.
in the press office clarified In the meeting with the fans, it was stated that the trucks will not pass through the repaired part of the bridge yet.
ferries stopped
On the morning of October 5, a huge traffic jam was reported at the crossing of the Kerch Strait due to weather conditions. Several hundred cars parked in the village of Ilyich. On 3 and 4 December, as the ferry service was not operating, about 370 cars had piled up there by morning.
Nikolai Lukashenko, acting head of the Ministry of Transport of Crimea, said that the crossing was not working due to strong winds. He noted that the weather is expected to improve on Tuesday, December 6th – then it will be possible to resume ferry traffic.
“Since Saturday we have received a storm warning across the Kerch Strait. We have a ferry crossing for a few days. “There is a possibility that the wind will decrease and ferry services will resume from Tuesday,” Lukashenka said.
What else is left to repair on the Crimean bridge?
On 3 November, Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin announced that it is planned to complete the span erection on the destroyed part of the bridge by 10 November. It was planned to start traffic along one lane of this section on December 5 – this plan was fulfilled.
On November 19, the builders completed the sliding of four spans in the Crimean bridge. According to the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Marat Khusnullin, the clearances on the right side of the road section have been changed.
The second strip is expected to be in service by December 20, after which the builders will begin to dismantle the openings on the left side of the bridge – according to plan, its repair will be completed by March 30, 2023. In November, Khusnullin announced that the repair of the second line on the railway part of the bridge is planned to be completed in 6-7 months. Restoration work will be carried out on the infrastructure until July 1, this will not affect the traffic. Deputy Prime Minister noted that the work is progressing according to the schedule.
Repair of the railway part of the bridge, which needs to replace the two spans, is scheduled to be completed in September 2023. According to Khusnullin, maybe this work will be accelerated.
The bridge across the Kerch Strait began to be built in 2016, it consists of railway and road bridges. In 2018, the movement of cars was started, a year later the railway part began to work. Taking into account the design, the length of the bridge was about 19 kilometers, its cost amounted to 223.6 billion rubles.
explosion on the bridge
On the night of 8 October, a truck explosion on the bridge collapsed the bridge’s two carriageway openings, and seven fuel tanks of a passing train caught fire. Four people died.
In early August 2022, explosives were sent from Odessa to the Bulgarian city of Ruse, and then via Georgia to the Russian Armavir, after which the bridge was blown up, the FSB reported. Thus, the explosives were removed from Ukraine after the signing of the food agreement on July 22.
After a while after the explosion, the traffic in the car section resumed in reverse gear. In the evening of the same day, traffic was opened on the railway bridge. A ferry was launched from the Kerch Strait to drain the traffic flow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin described the incident as a terrorist attack. The FSB of the Russian Federation said that the perpetrator of the attack was the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kirill Budanov. 12 people prepared the attack, eight of whom were detained.