The Moscow–Kazan high-speed railway is a planned 772-kilometre long high-speed railway line connecting the cities of Moscow and Kazan in the Russian Federation, going through the intermediate cities of Vladimir, Nizhny Novgorod and Cheboksary.[citation needed] The project had an original expected completion date of 2023, and was slated to be the first segment of an ambitious transnational high-speed railway set to connect Beijing and Moscow over a distance in excess of 7,000 kilometres, which is currently under consideration by the governments of Russia and China.[3][needs update] Planning work was finished in September 2017. Preliminary construction on stations and platforms, with space reserved for the railway, started in spring 2018.[4][needs update] Construction on the railway has been postponed as of March 2020, due to the high cost (estimated at 1.7 trillion rubles) and in lieu of further studies on ridership.[5]