Roads of a new class

18 thousand kilometers of highways of a new class with auxiliary traffic lanes and the increased traffic capacity will be required in Russia in the following years, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin declared at the meeting on problems of highways. "Available financial resources allow us to increase twice the volumes of road building during the next ten years ", – the Chairman of the Government stressed. Vladimir Putin told that it is planned to allocate more than eight trillions rubles for these purposes from the federal and regional road funds. The Prime Minister also instructed the Federal Antimonopoly Service to check up validity of sharp increase of cost of building materials. "This market is locally monopolized. The prices grow in some places sixfold!" – the Head of the Government underlined. The Prime minister also noticed that it is necessary to pass to a modern model of "life cycle contracts" at road construction. In particular, it is planned to contract for the term up to 30 years. Within the limits of such an agreement contractors should for their own funds build roads and be responsible for their maintenance and the state will pay their work. "This will eliminate the psychology of "time-servers”. Because in that case it will be profitable for the companies to build sound and durable roads ", – Putin explained. The Head of the Government urged to organize a complex monitoring of highway conditions, including the use of GLONASS equipment, as RIA Novosti news agency informs.