Glazyev Says String Transport Developers Are Offering Solutions For High-Speed Rail Line

Belarus and Russia will sign a document on a high-speed railway line. Union State State Secretary Sergei Glazyev told TASS this. His remarks did not make clear exactly what document he was referring to. At the same time, the state secretary raised the idea of using string transport.

“Transport Week will begin soon, and we expect a document to be signed there reflecting the intention of our railways to combine efforts in building such a line”, Glazyev said.

Plans to build high-speed rail lines in Russia were announced several years ago. One of them was supposed to connect Moscow and Minsk. Belarus suggested extending it to Brest. For now, Russia is implementing a project to build a line between Moscow and St Petersburg, which is expected to become operational in 2028-29. The line to Minsk is only fourth in the construction queue.

Glazyev said in the interview that there are also other solutions.

“Meanwhile, new technical solutions have emerged, including the so-called string transport technology developed in Belarus. This is, conditionally speaking, a suspended railway along which comfortable autonomous carriages carrying up to 30 passengers can travel at speeds of up to 150 km/h. The developers of this technology are offering their capabilities for building such a high-speed line using string transport, where they promise to increase the speed of these carriages to 300 km/h.

I think that one way or another, transport links between Russia and Belarus will continue to develop and become denser. We support the development of all types of transport that make it easier for people to travel and goods to be transported. In the future, we think we will link all Belarusian regions with neighbouring or nearby Russian regions”, he said.

This is not the first time Sergei Glazyev has tried to promote string transport in his public remarks. In September last year, at a business forum, he said he had discussed with Russia’s Transport Ministry the idea of stretching a “string” between Minsk and Moscow along which “carriages and railcars” could travel at 500 km/h. In October, he again shared this idea at a meeting of a scientific and expert council.

The creator of the string transport concept, Anatol Unitsky, has spent decades promoting the project without recognition from the professional community. His claims about a “transport revolution” and “space prospects” have been criticised as unscientific. He has also faced accusations of fraudulent fundraising schemes for the project, particularly in Russia and Belarus.

The string transport idea, promoted as a “revolution in future transport”, in practice faces serious technical, economic and operational problems. A structure based on tensioned rails is unstable under temperature changes and vibrations, raising questions about the system’s safety and durability. Claims of low cost and efficiency have not been confirmed by independent calculations, and projects have been limited to demonstration models without certification. The lack of major investors, scientific publications and real-world implementation makes string transport appear more like an example of pseudo-innovation and a marketing utopia than a viable transport technology.