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Monday, 02.06.2008
A new view of St Petersburg with double-decker buses
St Petersburg. Sightseeing City Tours offering the best view, flexible time tables and guided tours in all of eight languages – the Mayor wants to offer this service with brand new double-decker buses.
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For project "City Tour", together with a private bus company, six converted double-decker buses were acquired, that should arrive in St. Petersburg during June.
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The highlight of the expensive ˆ 450,000 fire engine red Volvo buses is the Upper Deck: Half of the buses have an open deck and protected from rain only by a light roof structure. The other three buses will be fully glazed around the top. The lower deck provides access for wheelchair users.
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With this service, Governor Valentina Matvienko wants to offer a product that has been standard in for a long time in many tourist centres: An "official" city tour round trip, with several stops en route, where one can get of,f and on again, with the next approaching bus, to continue the double-decker experience.
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135 minutes round trip for ˆ9.50
In June, the tours will be offered as a trial run, from July daily, 2 hour tour,s on the giant buses, will run from 9 to 23 hours. The price of a ticket will be 350 rubles (about 9.50 ˆ) for citizens and foreigners alike.
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Sitting high up, the passengers will not only see more than out of the usual tourist buses, but learn about the city through an individual voice communication system that provides commentaries in eight languages, in addition to the main European languages, Japanese and Chinese will be offered.
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The city tour will run from Nevsky Prospekt at Anichkov Bridge to the Fontanka, then over the Arts Square, the Summer Garden, across the Troitskoye Bridge to the St. Peter and Paul Fortress, continued on the Strelka to Isaac's Square and return to Nevsky.
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Bus ticket with added options
There are currently five stops scheduled which are to be increased to ten. The City Tour-day ticket will entitle reduced entrance to several sights in future. Special "white-night cruises are also planned.
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Mayor Matviyenko said at the presentation of the first converted Sightseeing-Volvo in Spain that an "old personal dream" has come true .
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We are hopingl that the buses will not get stuck in the exhaust plume of the downtown congestion too often. And that the overall project will survive better than a similar idea of "water trams" for city tours, that came up in previous years - and went down unceremoniously.
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Double-decker buses in St. Petersburg are not new, some years ago, original Berlin buses were used as "taxis" to collect people on the suburban route to the Peterhof.
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Original german text is here >>>
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