GLONASS will raise the navigation security level on the Volga-Baltic Waterway

Throughout the Volga-Baltic water trunk - from St. Petersburg to Cherepovets - 9 transceiving stations which with opening of navigation-2011 will "be joined" with the similar onboard equipment mounted on "river sea" vessels are mounted Interfax reports.

GLONASS will be used for control of ship traffic and prevention of emergency situations. Also a system allows to determine coordinates of the vessel, in distress. A system with a high accuracy can issue information on a vessel position, a rate, motion speed. In the device all necessary data on the vessel are strictly programmed. Besides, the crew of the watercraft regularly enters necessary data on run, port of withdrawal and arrival, time of an exit and arrival time to the port of destination. Vessels which are in a system area of coverage (10-20 miles) and also coast guards can see all this information. Last year Ministry of Transport made the decision on equipment of river crafts GLONASS system. Completely is going to finish equipment of the fleet in 2012.

Volga-Baltic Waterway — one of the major water trunks entering a single deep water system of internal waterways of the European part of Russia. It is the difficult complex of engineering objects including 4 thousand 900 km of the operated waterways, including 3 thousand 270 km — with the guaranteed dimensions, 11 gateways with a pressure from 11 to 18 meters, three hydroelectric power stations, 25 earth dams and dams, 12 ferries, 9 bridge crossings, 8 beacons in Lake Ladoga, more than 5 thousand navigational marks. The volume of transportation of goods on the Volga-Baltic Waterway in navigation of 2010 was 18.4 million tons that is nearly 10% higher than a similar indicator of previous year.