Russian Railways claim they are already prepared to launch the new route, but border stations are lacking.
Regular railway connection between Imatra and St.Petersburg will be opened in 2015, said Oleg Nikitin, the deputy director of OAO Federal Passengers Company affiliated to the Russian Railways.
The Federal Passengers Company has so far initiated three new routes between Russia and Finland: St.Petersburg-Imatra, Petrozavodsk-Sortavala-Joensuu, and Petrozavodsk-Kostomuksha-Oulu. “The final decision on these routes was taken on September 25”, said Nikitin to Delovoy Peterburg.
According to him, these three projects will start operating step by step. In 2012-2013, the trains will work to the order of travel companies. The first train to Joensuu will start its way on December 28 and return to Petrozavodsk on December 30. Other schedules are yet unknown.
On the second stage, the connection will be available on a special “weekend schedule”. That means a train starts from St.Petersburg on Friday evening and is back from Imatra on Sunday evening. The trip will take 3.5 hours at cost of RUB 1.200.
Stage three of the project is to arrange regular train connection on these routes. However, the lack of border stations is hampering the project development, Nikitin says.
Earlier this week, Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree to start a negotiation process between Russia’s Federal Agency on Borders Management (Rosgranitsa), Finland’s Customs and Border services. The initiative is to boost cooperation efforts and exchange of information related to development of the Russian-Finnish border

News source: barentsnova
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