Deputy Mayor of Almaty Serik Kusainov touched upon the construction of the metropolis and the surrounding LRT, the national portal "Adyrna" reports.
Kusainov said at a public hearing on "The state and prospects of development of transport infrastructure of the Almaty agglomeration" that next year it is planned to build an LRT network along the Talgar highway. The project is implemented at the expense of a private investor.
However, according to Elena Erzakovich, the head of the Almaty Sustainable Transport Project of the United Nations Development Program in Kazakhstan, the claims that the LRT will be built entirely at the expense of the investor are incorrect.
"There are a lot of questions about Rail Jet and Talgar LRT. It is wrong to say that they promise to build a tram at their own expense. They require funds from the budget, but then everything must be in direct agreement. The Astana scenario should not be repeated, "Elena Erzakovich said.
In turn, Deputy Mayor Serik Kusainov promised that the incident will not be repeated as in the capital's LRT.
“The Astana scenario will not be repeated. The city executive committee does not allocate funds, which is a public-private partnership. After the project is launched, funds will be allocated from the budget. According to the current legislation, we, like all our enterprises, will provide subsidies for transportation, "Serik Kusainov said.
Almaty Mayor Bakytzhan Sagintayev has previously said that the Kazakh government could not finance two major projects at the same time, such as the LRT and the metro.
“Before starting a project, we need to make sure that it does not stop. We can build it at any time, but for what money? When completed, the project will cost about a billion dollars, how will we return this money? I talked to the government about this, and in their view, we can not implement two large projects, such as the subway and LRT. We can't give up LRT construction halfway, so we have to be sure before we start. And, first of all, it finances the issue, ”the mayor said.
National portal "Adyrna"
