Is Trans-Siberian Railway just a dream?
Russia has announced its ambitious plans for development of Trans-Siberian Railway as a transit traffic artery of the country. It is assumed that the railroad development will help handle the transit traffic from Asia to Europe and back from the sea to rail transport. The market participants are doubtful on the feasibility of these plans and insist on elimination of ‘bottlenecks’ on the access roads to ports as a priority objective.
Shipping vs overland transport
Currently, annual capacity of Trans-Siberian Railway reaches 120 million tons. The figures were presented at the APEC Seminar "Sharing of best practices in the field of intermodal traffic" by Konstantin Tikhonov, deputy chief of the department of development of transport corridors and logistics programs of the Department of the Ministry of Transport of Russia.
He said that the highway development program involves the construction of second main lines of total length of 4,000 km, rail bypasses of almost all major railway junctions, the electrification of over 7,000 km and upgrade of digital technology network. The development of transit potential of the Railroad is also supposed to create door-to-door logistics solutions, the formation of logistic companies with competitive "through fares", the development of insurance services for transit goods.
he European section of Trans-Siberian Railway could be relieved of loads through development of the port of Arkhangelsk and Murmansk and railroad sidetracks.
As President of Euro-Asian Logistics Association Nikolai Tityukhin said the calculations on the example of auto parts shipments from Japan to the European part of Russia have proved that such movement through the Trans-Siberian Railway could be cheaper and take less time than shipping the cargo by sea via the port Hamburg.
According to him the TSR is promising for transportation of “Rosatom" equipment to Japan and auto parts-laden containers for car assembly plants based in the European part of Russia. To do this, however, it is necessary to create a logistics infrastructure around Moscow, not downtown, as it is now.
Nevertheless, many experts and market participants believe that the Trans-Siberian Railway as a transit line will hardly be able in the foreseeable future to become a serious rival to traditional shipping lanes.
Eurosib-Logistics CEO Igor Zhigory comments: "In reality, one can stay for 3 weeks waiting for a platform. Control authorities’ procedures last too long, which leads to congestions at terminals. There are not enough trucks, it turns out a headache to hand in empty containers…”
Executive Director of Phoenix Ltd. Alexei Shukletsov is also skeptical about the prospects of the railroad: "We asked our partners, whether they are ready to use the Trans-Siberian Railway, they said – no." The Trans-Siberian Railway passes through the sparsely populated regions of Russia where there is no infrastructure and there's no real reason for its development. The country may invest billions of rubles in its development but anyway it won’t work effectively. In addition, Russian Railways is a monopoly and only major shippers may have exclusive tariffs and good delivery time conditions.