Inaugurated this past Saturday, the Kyiv-Odesa expressway is undoubtedly Ukraine’s construction project of the century. It is Ukraine’s first motorway built according to international standards. With a price tag of 2.7 billion hryvnias, or 500 million US, the project involved over 50 subcontractors and 11,000 construction workers: road and bridge builders, units of railway troops and the Ukrzaliznytsia Ukrainian Railroad Company, as well as companies from Turkey, Russia, Belarus, Finland, Germany, Macedonia, and Holland.
The 18-month-long construction project produced an impressive tally of 12 bridges, 29 flyovers, 29 traffic interchanges, and 133 culverts. To level the highway, workers had to build embankments as high as twenty-four meters and lower the ground by up to eight meters in some sections. The 232nd kilometer of the motorway — the headwaters of the River Yatran in Cherkasy oblast — proved especially challenging. The peaty soil here was soaked with water and it would have been too risky to build the road in this marshland. They used a special technology to build this stretch of the motorway: a thin layer of soil was covered with a layer of geo-textile, followed by more layers of soil and geo-textile, which formed a ten-meter thick “sandwich”, later covered with the roadbed. This was a colossal undertaking, especially considering the tight deadlines: only five layers of soil and geo-textile each were laid on October 20, with the opening ceremony slated for October 23.
On this stretch, railroad construction workers actively assisted the road builders. According to Mykhailo Kostiuk, chief of the railroad construction department of Ukrzaliznytsia, his colleagues did what they normally do in their line of duty, i.e., they built embankments, culverts, and curbs, and lowered the terrain. This experience will come in handy during the planned repairs of the Kyiv-Poltava railway. The last stage of the construction project involved 3,000 railroad builders, who lived in train cars parked at the nearest railway terminal. The railroad company also invested heavily in the project. The first stage of construction had full funding from the South-Western Railroad Division of Ukrzaliznytsia. The Deutsche Bank has extended a $480 million loan for subsequent changes. Incidentally, Ukraine’s first expressway was built using locally made construction materials, the only exception being the imported geo-textile, and Ukrainian technologies developed by the Ukravtodor Ukrainian Road Construction Company. Experts claim that the quality of the Ukrainian materials is similar to European ones, and Mykhailo Kostiuk says that the new expressway has an extra margin of durability.
The numerous traffic interchanges make for a pleasurable, safe trip with no delays. The most unusual interchange looks like a cloverleaf from a bird’s eye view, and people are now calling it the “cloverleaf interchange.” “When you demolish an old motorway, you can see the much better quality of the new one,” Kostiuk says.
What will the new expressway give Ukraine? Above all, it cuts traveling time from Kyiv to Odesa to three and a half hours, whereas before such a trip would take at least five hours. The maximum allowable speed is now 140 kilometers per hour, and the distance between Kyiv and Odesa is 500 kilometers. Safety is a major question at such high speeds: on similar expressways in Europe, even a minor accident can result in a major pile-up, as drivers are unable to stop in time. However, road traffic in Ukraine is not as lively, which leads experts to believe that similar accidents are not likely on the expressway. In any case, the new expressway is safer than the old, potholed road.
According to a recent statement by the Ministry of Transport, for the time being the expressway will be toll free until a new, alternative road is built in 2006.
The date of the inauguration ceremony was postponed several times. Construction was still underway in Cherkasy and Mykolayiv oblasts in the last week, and even though on October 20 the expressway did not look completed in these two oblasts, Mykhailo Kostiuk was certain that the construction work would finish by the inauguration ceremony. The final stage of construction involved 3,500 railroad construction workers and 1,500 construction machines. Erecting traffic signs and planting roadside grass were the final touches. The Kyiv-Odesa expressway is part of the Ninth International Transport Corridor connecting Finland, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, and Greece.
Ukraine is planning more expressway construction projects. Next in line is the Kharkiv-Odesa expressway.
