September 8, 2007 (LPAC)--The Russian cabinet on Thursday passed a strategic development plan that could see Russian Railways spending 13 trillion rubles ($506 billion) to overhaul its infrastructure and expand railway connections to the country's major ports and business centers by 2030, Russian media reported yesterday. This includes the planned rail link to the Bering Straits, which will lead to a planned tunnel to Alaska.

The program will aim to improve the rail network's efficiency and quality of service, Russian Railways, or RZD, said in a statement posted on its web site. RZD chief Vladimir Yakunin unveiled the plan at a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, already on Tuesday.

Under the program, some of the company's outdated railcars and rolling stock will be replaced and 6,000 kilometers of new railroads, including high-speed rail tracks, will be built by 2015. A further 15,800 kilometers of rail lines are planned by 2030, including the 3,500-kilometer line to the Bering Straits and a link between Sakhalin Islanad and the mainland. Yakunin said that the greatest amount of new rail development will be in the eastern regions, so that "we will acheive an accelerated development of Eastern Siberia and Russia's Far East, which will have a population of over 18 million people, and we will create the conditions needed to develop coal deposits with an annual output of 65 million tons, and to produce 10 million tons of ore in 2030, as well as provide a major boost to the development of new oil and gas fields."