The Third Pacific Railway Project: the problem of assessing public performance in a situation of uncertainty

The purpose of research is to study the problems of implementing large-scale railway projects performed by private companies. The objective of the study is to characterize the internal and external risks of the implementation of large-scale railway projects by private companies. As a method of analysis, the analysis and synthesis of information available in the open press on the project for the construction of a railway from the Elga coal deposit to the Pacific port of Chumikan was chosen. In modern Russia, there are not many examples of the implementation of private railway projects, and this is the first large-scale railway project in terms of the efficiency of building a private railway through public investment. In anticipation of this, it may turn out that a private company, having no experience in such construction, will build a railway faster, without requiring funding from the state. Thus, the ELSI company plans to implement this project for146.6 billion rubles, while the Government of the Russian Federation instead of this project proposed to expand the BAM for 332,6 billion rubles without guarantees for the export of coal from the Elga deposit in the amount of 30 million tons. The question remains to what extent capital investments, which are low by the standards of Russian Railways, will ensure safe movement. In addition, access to the common infrastructure of Russian Railways for coal miners is limited by quotas due to the limited capacity of the BAM and the Trans-Siberian Railway. In view of this, other coal companies cannot use their production capacity to the full extent due to limited coal export opportunities. In this situation, ELSI creates incredible advantages for itself by exporting coal without access to public infrastructure in the volumes that they can extract and export themselves. In such a situation, the cost of coal is likely to be lower than that of competitors due to the short transport distance and high turnover, even taking into account investments in the railway project.