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City Hall Cuts Back on Road Construction

City Hall has reduced spending plans on road construction by 34 percent, with allocated funds dropping from a planned 143 billion rubles ($4.5 billion) for 2014 to 95 billion rubles, a news report said.

A total of 272 billion rubles will be spent on road construction over three years, Vedomosti reported. The city had allotted 413 billion rubles for the timeframe between 2013 and 2015.

The city government is delaying many of its planned road projects, while the remaining ones have become more expensive, an analysis of the road construction plans revealed.

The timeframe to build a road parallel to Kutuzovsky Prospekt has not been defined. Earlier, officials said construction was going to start on the northern portion of the backup road at the end of 2013.

The delay in reconstruction of Leninsky Prospekt was announced before the mayoral elections that took place earlier this month. Work on Volgogradsky Prospekt and Voloklamskoye Shosse was supposed to begin this year, but according to the program, city funding for Volgogradskoye will not be available until 2017. Work on Volokolamskoye Shosse will be done between 2014 and 2017.

Kaluzhskoye Shosse will be expanded in increments. The main part of the project will not start until 2016, although some work will be done next year.

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