Moscow Scraps Sakhalin Bridge Plans

Russian Railroads Ministry has announced it's scrapping plans to build a railroad bridge from the continent to the Island of Sakhalin in the Russian Far East. Railroads Minister Gennady Fadeyev told reporters Thursday that the plan to build a bridge carrying a railroad track that would connect the sprawling Pacific island to the continent near the city of Komsomolsk-on-the-Amur has been abandoned because, he said, "The Railroads Ministry doesn't have the funds to develop the project." If the government is at all interested in the project, it would have to raise the funds the Ministry lacks, he added. "The construction of the bridge costs dearly, but the approaches to the bridge from the Strait of Komsomolsk are even more expensive," Fadeyev cautioned. Last year Railroad Minister Nikolai Aksyonenko, who has recently been fired from this post, busily lobbied for the construction. He estimated the price tag for the project would make $10 to 14 billion.