Every year, roads in Ukraine and in Transcarpathia, in particular, horrify drivers more and more. Neither the decentralization of the Ukravtodor nor the creation of the Road Fund could help. Despite regular patch repairs and money spent, there has been no noticable result yet. Asphalt is melting together with snow. Memes about the state of roads are being spread online, on one of them a Transcarpathian can not find his car in one of the many potholes on the road.
Who is supposed to keep roads in good condition?
The national roads are maintained at the expense of the state budget, local ones – at the expense of local budgets and are subsidized from the state budget.
In 2018, 47 billion hryvnias was allocated for the national roads of Ukraine, in 2019 – 56 billion hryvnias. Subventions in the amount of 11.5 billion hryvnias were allocated from the state budget for the local roads. That is, each region received a subvention for the repair of national roads.
When talking about roads, one must understand that two thirds of the total length of the roads are now maintained at the expense of local budgets, while central authorities take care of the country’s most important highways, and their length is only one-third of the entire length of the roads in the country.
National roads in critical condition
In Transcarpathia, there are the following international roads:
M-06 Kyiv-Chop (Budapest via Lviv, Mukachevo, Uzhgorod)
M-08 Bypass road Uzhgorod – checkpoint Uzhgorod
M-23 Beregovo – Vynogradiv – checkpoint Velyka Kopanya
M-24 Mukachevo – Beregovo – checkpoint Luzhanka
M-25 Solomonovo – Velyka Dobron – Yanoshi
M-26 checkpoint Vylok – Vylok – Nevetlenfolu – checkpoint Dyakove
Some more roads of national importance:
H-09 Mukachevo – Ivano-Frankivsk – Rohatyn – Lviv (via Rakhiv)
H-13 Lviv – Sambir – Uzhgorod
All these roads with the length of 921.2 km are under care of Road Service of Transcarpathian region, a structural subdivision of the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine
Regarding the critical condition of these roads, the regional commission on emergencies decided that the current state of the national roads in Transcarpathia could lead to an emergency at the state level. Transcarpathian Regional State Administration appealed to the Cabinet on this matter. On February 6, it was reported about an additional allocation of funds for the repair of Transcarpathian roads – almost UAH 578 million. 42 million will be used for major repairs and 533 million for current and medium repairs. They promise start after the tenders are conducted and as soon as the weather allows.
Repair of local roads. Transcarpathia is in the bottom three
Recall that on January 1, 2018, such roads were placed under the management of regional state administrations.
In 2018, the government allocated a record amount of 11.5 billion hryvnias for repairs of local roads. Over UAH 218 million in subventions was allocated to the regional budget in Transcarpathia (UAH 218,740.3 thousand).
As we can see from the data of the regional budget, the funds were transferred in full, however, just slightly more than half of that amount was used – 56%, which is almost 123 million hryvnias of cash expenses (UAH 122,574.39 thousand). 6.5 million remained on the accounts of the regional budget (UAH 6,520.38 thousand)
Thus, Transcarpathia was among the three worst performers of repairs on local roads.
For 2019, the prime minister has already announced that the previous record would be broken and 17 billion would be allocated from the state budget for the local roads of Ukraine.
For Transcarpathia, more than 280 million hryvnias are provided for the repair of local roads in 2019. Successful use of funds depends on the effective work of local authorities.
How much money is needed for Transcarpathian roads?
The following amount was spent on all roads in Transcarpathia, both national and local ones:
in 2017 – UAH 670 million
in 2018 – UAH 840 million, incl. 430 million for Kyiv-Chop highway.
According to Omelyan estimates, Transcarpathia needs at least UAH 4 billion for the roads.
Bypass road of Beregovo – the project that still has not been implemented
At the beginning of 2018, a tender for the design and construction of a bypass road in the city of Beregovo and the village of Astey to the checkpoint "Luzhanka" worth 25,409,550.00 EUR including VAT was announced. However, the tender did not take place due to submission of less than two tender offers, only the Road Service in Transcarpathian region applied for participation.
At the end of 2018, the Government of Hungary announced its readiness to provide a $ 50 million loan for the construction of roads in Transcarpathia.
As you can see, all roads in Transcarpathia are in a terrible state. Both central and local authorities are not able to maintain roads in good condition. Neither significant cash inflows nor redistribution of responsibilities between state bodies help, because, as we can see, nothing has changed.
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