The Kerch Bridge will connect Crimea and the Taman Peninsula
For now, you can get to Crimea by ferry, where a very difficult situation has developed due to the large flow of tourists. During the holiday season, about 2 thousand cars accumulate at the crossing and have to wait for their turn for days.
In order to select the most optimal option for laying the bridge, 74 options were analyzed. The potential intensity of road and rail transport, construction costs, and the feasibility of constructing tunnel crossings were taken into account.
Experts immediately named the “Tuzlinsky alignment” as the most likely, since this particular route of the Kerch Bridge was initially shorter than others, by 10-15 km. However, its main advantage is its remoteness from the Kerch ferry crossing and intensive shipping.
This option also makes it possible to use the 750-meter wide Tuzlinskaya Spit. It is proposed to lay a road and railway along it, which will reduce the number of bridge crossings by 6.5 km, which means that the labor intensity and cost of construction will be reduced significantly.
The first bridge, 1.4 km long, will run from the Taman Peninsula to Tuzla Island, and the second, 6.1 km long, is designed to connect Tuzla with the Kerch Peninsula. The total length of the bridge will be about 19 km.
On the Crimean coast there will be a highway to the M-17 highway 8 km long and a railway 17.8 km long to the station. Bagerovo, through which the railway of republican significance passes. In the Krasnodar Territory, a 41 km long highway to the M-25 road and a 42 km long railway to the Vyshesteblievskaya intermediate station on the Caucasus-Crimea railway are being designed.
Few people know, but the railway bridge across the Kerch Strait has already been built once. More than fifty years ago, when the Germans still hoped to gain complete power over all of Eurasia, Hitler nurtured a blue dream - to connect Germany with the Persian Gulf countries by rail through the Kerch Strait. During the occupation of the peninsula by fascist troops, steel structures were brought to Crimea for the construction of a bridge. Work began in the spring of 1944, after the liberation of the Crimean peninsula from the Nazi invaders.
On November 3, 1944, railway traffic was opened on the bridge. However, after just three months, the bridge's supports were destroyed by ice. Having lost its strategic importance, the bridge was dismantled and replaced by a ferry crossing. However, regardless of such a seemingly primitive design, the construction of a bridge of such length on a sea strait in wartime is a historical event and a technical achievement.
The new Kerch Bridge is supposed to be made of two levels, since it should include railway tracks and a highway. At the same time, on some sections of the bridge, trains will move parallel to cars, and on others, they will pass over or under them.