Environmental aspect of the organization of cargo bypass in the alignment of the corridor «Center – South»

The development of railways is the most important condition for maintaining its position at the transportation market and increasing the competitiveness of railway transport in future. This may be, for example, the specialization of existing railway lines on the line with mainly freight and on the line with mainly passenger traffic. But due to the insufficiently dense railway network, the implementation of such projects leads to appearance of large train runs and an increase in the cost of transportation. The article shows that the organization of high - speed railway traffic on the existing mainline reduces the train running time by using the example of Moscow - Voronezh - Rostov-on-the-Don - Krasnodar - Sochi transport corridor, which is experiencing a shortage of carrying capacity, and the project of specialization of the mainline for high-speed passenger traffic. In the conditions of fierce competition with air and road transport, the travel time of 16-18 hours to Sochi will not change the distribution of passenger traffic between modes of transport, but only maintain the status quo. But the removal of freight traffic from the Voronezh - Rostov line will bring big losses both for JSC «Russian Railways» (the loss of the cargo base) and for the economy of the whole country. The ETW method is used to compare the overall environmental impact of freight trains movement on a non-circular route, their movement through Volgograd, as well as on road transport. It is proved that when the cargo flow is carried out on a circular route, the environmental advantage of railway transport is lost, and its impact is compared with that of road transport. It is concluded that instead of specialization of the existing congested lines, it is necessary to consider the phased construction of a new specialized high-speed railway (HSR), for the payback of which there is already sufficient passenger traffic in this transport corridor.