Recall that the first stage of the Western Highway will run from the A-280 Rostov-on-Don – Taganrog highway to Peskova Street in Rostov. In 2025, the route will cross the Dead Donets River at its confluence with the Don, extend along the Kumzhenskaya Forest (it will lose seven percent of its trees) and reach the Western Bridge. This will close the road ring road around Rostov – the main transport project of the Don capital.
In the western residential area, the highway will run along the border with the constantly urbanizing Leventsovka microdistrict, where a high-speed tram will be launched for the first time in post-Soviet times. However, beyond the industrial zone lies a real terra incognita: the land on the right bank of the Dead Donets River was previously intended for ponds and fish farming. The ponds have long since been turned into steppe thickets. As the city has already come closer here, the authorities are thinking about further use of the land.
The completion of the Western Expressway will create prospects for the construction of at least three residential microdistricts here. At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June, Rostov Region Governor Vasily Golubev noted that after the completion of the construction, the transport situation in the city will change: transit transport will finally leave the city.
It has also become known that Dom.rf is ready to invest 7 billion rubles (with a total project cost of about 20 billion) to complete the construction of the Rostov Western Corridor. The final decision will be made soon. According to the director of the state-owned company Vitaly Mutko, this is a complex project that is financed by loans and budgetary funds. The borrowers will be the companies Region and Avtodor. They will be the customers of this route, Vitaly Mutko said.
So far, only one area is known about the western chord – Kumzhensky. The Kumzhensky residential complex is planned to be built on the land of a former pond farm on an area of almost 840 hectares. It will be located within the boundaries of the Dead Donets River, Kumzhenskaya Grove and the road to Koluzaevo.
In the first phase, houses will be built on an area of two million square meters, and in the second – on an area of another million. As a result, more than 87 thousand people will be able to live in the new microdistrict. Eight schools, each with a capacity of 1,500 students, and 20 kindergartens are planned to be built.
There was no official information about who would develop this area. But in April this year, one of the largest Moscow construction groups announced the construction of a new microdistrict in the Zheleznodorozhny district of Rostov. According to media reports and real estate experts, we are talking specifically about the site next to Kumzhenskaya Grove – the area and parameters of the future development are the same.
Of course, not everyone views this project in a positive light. Architect Sergei Trukhachev, director of the Southern Urban Planning Center, argues that such projects change the already formed architecture of the city and create a transport collapse on the outskirts, as happened, for example, with the Suvorovsky microdistrict in its northern part. The authorities, realizing the mistake related to the lack of roads, were forced to “cut short” – buy more than 140 plots with houses from local residents in order to widen the road leading to the microdistrict. However, this will not solve all of Suvorovsky’s problems – many more roads still need to be built.
– We are conducting an experiment with the Levoberezhny residential complex in a floodplain area, behind which two more plots have been prepared for construction. We are creating artificial villages with 25-storey buildings. The city districts are not interconnected. This is a deliberately vicious urban environment, divorced from the city,” says Sergei Trukhachev. – And why so much housing? We have a huge reserve on the site of the former airport (420 hectares). In comparison, it occupies about 80 percent of the area of the Northern residential area, which took about 30 years to develop.
Other concerns relate to the difficult terrain, as the area was previously under water and can still be flooded today.
According to Maxim Khmel, managing partner of the Parus Academy of Sciences, it is “a difficult place.”
– Only comprehensive development is possible there; the entire engineering and social infrastructure needs to be built. Transport accessibility is the only problem that has been solved so far. I wonder who will decide on the rest? – asks Maxim Khmel.
Meanwhile
An alternative toll road section of the Western Highway in Rostov will be Vsesoyuznaya and Malinovskogo streets. Presumably, the toll road will be on the second section of the Western Highway. Its cost will be from 150 to 850 rubles, depending on the type of transport.
The future highway will free the capital of the Don from traffic, provide convenient entrances and exits in several directions, reduce traffic jams, and also have a beneficial effect on the environmental and economic situation. Traffic on the Western Highway could reach 22 thousand vehicles per day as early as 2025 and 30 thousand in 2035.
