The new tunnel will allow to increase the annual freight capacity of that particular part of the BAM from 16 to 100 million tons.
[2] In 2010, the Russian Railways president Vladimir Yakunin announced his ambitious plan to reconstruct the BAM to reach a freight capacity of 100 million tons by 2050.
The main obstacle was the worst ‘bottleneck’ of the BAM — the aging one-way Severomuysky Tunnel.
[4] In March 2019, Dmitry Bosov, the owner of Siberian Anthracite Group, sent a letter to the Russian president Vladimir Putin, proposing to build the new tunnel in 5 years and privately finance it in exchange for the Group’s priority access to the BAM and the Trans-Siberian Railway to transport 50 mln tons of cargo annually for the next 25 years.
Such a deal will allow Sibanthracite to significantly increase its delivery of anthracite and metallurgical coal to the Pacific Rim.