The State Agency of Automobile Roads of Ukraine (Ukravtodor) has begun road repair and construction work at 118 sites in 18 regions, Head of Ukravtodor Oleksandr Kubrakov said on his Facebook page.
He noted that 100 objects are funded by the State Road Fund and 18 in the framework of cooperation between Ukravtodor and international financial organizations.
“Mostly preparatory work is being done at this stage, but, for example, asphalt is already laid on roads H-30 and H-09,” he added.
Other facilities, he said, are still at the public procurement stage. In 2020, some 289 tenders were announced, the total expected cost is UAH 28 billion.
The Rostdorstroy group of road construction companies, as part of expanding its business, carries out rebranding and will be renamed RDS, co-owner of the group Yuriy Shumakher has said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
“We decided that the name of the company Rostdorstroy is long and heavy, especially for the European market, in which we, in addition to the Ukrainian market, want to be represented,” he said, noting that rebranding will allow the company to develop more actively in international markets.
According to the expert, ubiquitous digitalization and a huge flow of information force brands and companies to grow rapidly, in particular changing their visual image.
“Everything is becoming more simplified, easy,” he said.
He noted that initially the company was created as the Rost (Growth) investment group for construction of housing and commercial real estate.
“When we decided to invest in roads in 2005, we called the project Rostdorstroy. Now we work in the field of road construction and are already in the top three companies in this market,” he described the evolutionary path of development of the company and its brands.
The Ukrainian group of companies RDS includes Kyivshliakhbud and Rostdorstroy. The core business is construction, reconstruction and maintenance of roads and bridges, construction of airfield complexes.
The company is building concrete road H-14 Kropyvnytsky-Mykolaiv. As part of the reconstruction of the H-31 Dnipro-Reshetylivka highway in Poltava region, RDS is building an overpass over the railway and the section of the first concrete road in Ukraine. In 2019, the company won a World Bank tender for work on the first category highway M-03 Kyiv-Kharkiv-Dolzhansky.
As of January 2020, the company operates in seven regions of Ukraine and has ten production bases.
The ultimate beneficial owners of RDS are Ukrainian citizens Yuriy Shumakher and Yevhen Konovalov. The charter capital of the company is UAH 5.13 million
Ukraine must refuse road patching repairs, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has stated. “Patching repairs should be a thing of the past,” he said during a press conference on road repairs in Kyiv. According to the president, the construction and overhauls of roads should account for about 80% of all road works.
Zelensky also emphasized the importance of providing guarantees for all road construction works so that “asphalt does not disappear with snow.”
“We must build in order to destroy. To break the stereotype that Ukraine and good roads are not compatible concepts,” Zelensky said.
At the same time, the president noted that at present only 15 regions of the country had approved the list of road construction and repairs.
“We expect that local authorities will intensify their work and approve the list of construction and repair of roads. Today only 15 regions have done so … And three regions have not passed the list at all (Lviv, Zakarpattia and Sumy regions),” he said.
Zelensky also recalled that the plans for 2020 are to upgrade 4,000 km of state roads.
The government also plans in 2020 to build 2,500 km of local roads, for which UAH 22.2 billion will be allocated, or 70% more than was used last year. In general, this will allow creating about 12,000 new jobs.
Prime Minister of Ukraine Oleksiy Honcharuk has said he hopes that a large-scale building of roads will start on March 1, 2020.
“Since March 1, a large-scale building [of roads] to start…This year it is necessary to prepare for the most early start of the season. We, in turn, will try to complete all the procedures by this moment,” he said during a press conference Roads UA 2020 in Kyiv on Monday.
He also asked the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU) to favor this.
“We know that there are certain difficulties, that someone is doing stupid things: disputes every second tender in the Antimonopoly Committee. We ask the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine do not accept such a model of behavior. Respond by the quick, honest work,” Honcharuk added.
The Verkhovna Rada has ratified a financial agreement between Ukraine and the European Investment Bank (EIB) to improve road safety. Some 334 deputies voted on Thursday for corresponding draft law No. 0014 of December 13, 2019, the parliament’s website said.
According to the text of the explanatory note, the agreement stipulates the provision by Ukraine of the EIB state guarantee to ensure the implementation of the project “Improving Road Safety in Ukrainian Cities.”
It is expected that the project will reduce the number of accidents and the severity of their consequences; increase the share of travel by bicycle, on foot or by public transport in the total volume of traffic and, accordingly, reduce the number of trips by private transport. In addition, the project will reduce the time spent by passengers at public transport stops, as well as the operating costs of road transport owners and emissions of harmful substances into the air.
According to Minister of Infrastructure Vladyslav Krykliy, the estimated cost of the project is EUR 177 million, of which an IEB loan is EUR 75 million (the agreement was signed on July 9, 2018), a loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is estimated at EUR 75 million (it is planned to sign the agreement in 2020 year), and own funds of cities and technical assistance totaling EUR 27 million.
“Improving safety for the cities of Lviv, Odesa, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Kamenetz-Podilsky includes improving the infrastructure of road intersections, infrastructure for cyclists and public transport, arranging facilities to reduce speed in settlements and near schools, etc.,” he said on his Facebook page on Thursday evening.
The law amending the law on automobile roads regarding the audit of road safety will open access to better financing of road construction by international financial institution (IFIs) for Ukraine, Senior Sector Engineer of the European Investment Bank (EIB) Per Mathiasen said at a press conference devoted to the results of the EIB Implementation Support to the Ukraine Urban Road Safety Project in Kyiv on Tuesday.
The European Investment Bank, the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, all of them stress the importance of road safety, he said.
Mathiasen said that Ukraine needed to change the construction of roads for the safety of road users.
The new law will ensure that safety will become an integral part of the design and planning of new roads, he said.
In addition, according to Mathiasen, the law will make new roads safe and accessible for everyone: cars, cyclists and public transport.
In turn, Deputy Infrastructure Minister of Ukraine Natalia Forsiuk recalled that the government has set two key goals in the field of road infrastructure: “reducing travel time by 10% and reducing the number of traffic accidents by 30%.”
“That is, traffic safety is the only immediate priority of the government [in this area],” she said.
The main priority of the EIB Implementation Support to the Ukraine Urban Road Safety Project, which is funded by the Eastern Partnership Technical Assistance Trust Fund and implemented by Egis Ukraine, is the development of the law of Ukraine on automobile roads regarding the audit of road safety, preparation of technical documentation and boosting the capacity necessary to implement the road infrastructure safety management procedures and to promote the adoption of the law and its enforcement.
In order to implement this project, on October 17, 2019, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the law amending certain legislative acts of Ukraine on road safety management. The law contains most of the provisions of EU Directive 2008/96/EC on road infrastructure safety management, which is a version of the EU law on road infrastructure safety management procedures.
As reported, acting head of the State Automobile Roads Authority of Ukraine (Ukravtodor) Slawomir Nowak said that EBRD and EIB are ready to provide Ukraine with a targeted loan in the amount of EUR 900 million for the development of the road industry in 2020.
The level of road accidents in Ukraine is much higher than in EU countries.
