By David Gold
November 24 – The Russian organising committee for the 2018 FIFA World Cup have signed an agreement with the Olympic Games Transport Directorate, who have worked on the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games and the Kazan 2013 Summer University Games, to develop transport links during the competition.
Alexey Sorokin (pictured left), chief executive of Russia 2018 and the driving force behind the successful campaign to host theWorld Cup, signed the agreement at the Russian Ministry of Transport’s Transport Week 2011.
Transport infrastructure is a key issue for Russia in 2018 given the sheer scale of the country.
Although the venues will all be comparatively closely connected in the west, given the size of Russia, high speed rail links are being planned, with Yekaterinburg, a city near the Ural mountains which is 1,800 kilometres from Moscow and from which journeys to other potential host cities would at present take up to 26 hours by train, likely to be chosen to stage games during the tournament.
Airport infrastructure also needs to be upgraded to cope with increased demand during the competition, as well as combating the relatively centralised nature of the country, with many places, particularly in the south, tricky to reach directly without flying via Moscow.
Sorokin recently announced that the decision on which cities would host games during the World Cup would be brought forward a year to 2013 to help deal with the various transport issues.
The Organising Committee and the Transport Directorate will now be working together to create a transport services plan, with both sides looking to cooperate on both infrastructural and logistical issues ahead of 2018.
The Transport Directorate, set up in 2009, has vast experience in international sporting events, with the Winter Olympic Games just over two years away, and was involved in the collating of the transport section of Russia’s bid book prior to FIFA awarding it the right to stage the 2018 World Cup.
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