Transportation
Yakutsk is a destination of the Lena Highway. The city's connection to the highway is only accessible by ferry in the summer, or in the dead of winter, directly over the frozen Lena River, as Yakutsk lies entirely on its western bank, and there is no bridge anywhere in the Sakha Republic that crosses the Lena. The river is impassable for long periods of the year when it contains loose ice, when the ice cover is not sufficiently thick enough to support traffic, or when the water level is too high and the river turbulent with spring flooding. The highway ends on the eastern bank of Lena in Nizhny Bestyakh (Нижний Бестях), an urban-type settlement of some four thousand people. Yakutsk is connected with Magadan by the Kolyma Highway.
A dual-use railroad and roadway bridge over the Lena is scheduled to be built by 2013, when the Amur Yakutsk Mainline, the North-South railroad being extended from the South, will finally connect the city with the East-West Baikal Amur Mainline. The railway reached the settlement of Nizhny Bestyakh, on the opposite bank of the Lena from Yakutsk, in November 2011.
The future combined rail and road bridge will be over 3-kilometer (1.9 mi) long and constructed 40 kilometers (25 mi) upriver at Tabaga, where the river narrows and does not create a wide flooded area in spring. In the dead of winter, the frozen Lena makes for a passable highway for ice truckers using its channel to deliver provisions to far-flung outposts. Yakutsk is also connected to other parts of Russia by Yakutsk Airport.
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