The “Western Europe – Western China” Motor rally has finished.

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The “Western Europe – Western China” motor rally started on August 27, 2013 fromByelorussian international Kozlovichi motor crossing (the border of Belarus Republic and Poland) and finished in Almaty on September 6,2013.

The rally was arranged by Kazakhstan Association of Road Workers, Kazakhstan Road Research Institute, KazakhDorStroy LLP, Intergovernmental Rod Workers Council and BelAutoDor.

In the expedition, representatives from Ministries of Transport, road industry experts from Kazakhstan, Russia, and Belarus took part.

The motor rally’s major goals are: attracting the Customs Union countries’ governments’ attention to the issues of maintenance and construction of roads and developing road carriages; simplifying the procedures for cargo flow through the border control, and revealing the administrative barriers.

Chief of Secretariat of Intergovernmental Road Workers Council Buri Karimov noted that currently, a large-scale work on raising the roads’ quality is in progress. He also emphasized the importance of cooperation among the countries’ road professionals and authorities.

In the course of rally, the participants had a meeting with Deputy Minister of Transport & Public Roads of the Republic of Tatarstan Yuri Kusmin, Governor of Orenburg region Yuri Berg, Head of Nizhny Novgorod Road Research Institute “GIPRODORNII” Andrey Krylov and other representatives from road industry. At the meetings, participants shared information on the status of construction of highway.

According to the representative from BelarusYuri Burtyl, the team was assessing quality and convenience of roads in Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

In the motor column of 10 vehicles, there was also a laboratory. This vehicle allows getting to know the status of roads by measuring the evenness of surface, the track pit, and roughness. Such system’s advantage is that inside the vehicle, there are special computers that capture and process the data automatically. In this way, human factor is excluded, with only true information coming to the database. Thanks to such information the road network’s status is tracked and decisions are made on improving it. 

The team passed along the route: Brest – Minsk – Mozhaisk – Nizhny Novgorod – Kazan – Orenburg – Aktobe – Kyzylorda – Turkestan – Shymkent – Taraz – border of People’s Republic of China and Republic of Kazakhstan (Khorgos city) – Almaty. 

During the rally, the road workers’ townships were also visited, which allowed the the delegation journalists’ understanding and seeing for themselves how the roads are constructed.

To Kazakhstan, the “Western Europe – Western China” project is of importance both from the perspective of implementation of the country’s transport potential and creation of transport connection between its southern and western regions.

Upon reconstruction, the route will be the fastest one to carry cargo from China to Europe.

MoTC RK website: www.mtk.gov.kz [2].