An agreement on the creation of the first stage of the LHW – Vitebsk junction was signed

On November 18, 2020, within the framework of the Transport Week forum in Moscow, the government of St. Petersburg and VTB Group signed an additional agreement on the creation of a traffic junction between the WHSD and Vitebsky Prospekt. The signing was attended by Vice Governor Maxim Sokolov and First Deputy President – Chairman of the Management Board of VTB Bank Yuri Soloviev.

In accordance with the document, the partners are implementing one of the design solutions of the Western High-Speed Diameter – arrangement of a traffic intersection with Vitebsky Prospekt and a prospective connection to the Latitudinal Highway (LHW).

The construction of the Vitebsk junction is planned to start in the first quarter of 2021, the estimated construction period will be four years. The length of the junction is about 2.5 km, the capacity is up to 70,000 vehicles per day, traffic is provided in 6 lanes at a speed of up to 110 km/h.

The cost of creating the junction will be about 27 billion , and 12 billion rubles will be allocated for the territory preparation. Funding will be provided by funds of the investor, city and federal budgets.

"The Vitebsk junction gives a start to a large-scale project of the LHW, which, in terms of its volume and significance for the city, is comparable to the Western High-Speed Diameter. I would like to thank the federal government, our partners and note that the use of the public-private partnership mechanism once again confirms that St. Petersburg successfully implements interaction with business and is the leader in public-private partnership in Russia, – said the vice-governor of St. Petersburg Maxim Sokolov. – The construction of the Vitebsk junction will allow us to solve at once several key transport problems of the city, which the Governor of St. Petersburg sets before us, including ensuring the connection of the WHSD with Moskovsky and Frunzensky districts. It will also be possible to reduce the load on the street and road network and redistribute traffic going through the central regions. This is another important step towards the construction of intracity highways."

The Vitebsk junction is the first stage in the implementation of a large-scale transport project of St. Petersburg – the Latitude Highway. The new highway will run from the WHSD through the southern planning zone of the city, provide transport accessibility to actively built up residential areas of St. Petersburg and Leningrad region, connect the eastern part of St. Petersburg with the center and with the north of the city. The LHW will become for St. Petersburg the second experience in implementing of PPP project in the field of transport infrastructure of such scale.

WHSD is a unique investment project to create an intracity toll multi-lane highway. This is the world's largest PPP project in the field of the toll roads creation, one of the first and most ambitious public-private partnership projects in Russia. An agreement with the Northern Capital Highway, LLC on the creation and operation of the Western High-Speed​Diameter has been in effect in St. Petersburg since 2012. The total length of the road, including exits and junctions, is more than 70 kilometers. The WHSD serves about 350 thousand car trips daily, the traffic amounted to almost 100 million transactions in just 2019.