In 1901 the engineer Vladimir Pechkovsky presented his project to build an elevated station in the middle of Nevsky Prospect, opposite the Kazan Cathedral, and to link it, via elevated and underground sections of track (above the Ekaterinsky and Obvodny canals and beneath the Zabalkansky prospect) with the Baltiysky and Varshavsky Rail Terminals. In the same year, Reshevsky, also an engineer, working at the behest of the Emperor's minister for transport, came up with two possible projects, which aimed primarily to unite all of Saint Petersburg's main railway stations with one urban interchange. An interesting development, the work upon which had been carried out for many years by railway engineer P.I. Balinsky (one of the first Russian metro engineers) involved plans to build a dedicated network of six urban lines, two of which would be radial lines with a total length of . The construction work (including the filling of low-lying areas of the city in order to avoid flooding, construction of 11 major bridges, embankments and viaducts at a height of , and the actual laying of track etc.) was projected to cost around 190 million rubles. However, in 1903 Emperor Nicholas II rejected the scheme before any work ever started.