SKYROCKETTING sea shipping costs have prompted Chinese manufacturers to send increasing number of goods to Europe by rail acroos Russia, resulting in creating bottlenecks and straining the country's network capacity.
With countries frantically replenishing stocks and exporting finished goods as they recover from the pandemic, global sea ports are snarling up, making rail an attractive alternative.
State monopoly Russian Railways said total container traffic transiting Russia jumped 40 per cent in the first nine months of 2021 to 782,000 TEU, and could hit a record 1 million TEU this year, according to Reuters.
'At the beginning of the year the cost of shipping goods in containers by rail between Asia and Europe was twice as low as by sea. Now it is 3.5 times (lower),' the rail company said.
Most of the growth has come along the China-Russia-Europe route, where transit volumes for the first nine months rose 47 per cent to 568,700 TEU.
But transport operators and analysts say the rapid growth has exposed infrastructure problems that could limit transit flows significantly.
These include shortages of staff - including managers and crane operators - and of rolling stock, said Alexey Bezborodov, head of Infraproject, a consultancy that analyses data and trends in transport and infrastructure.
'No one believed in such a sharp increase in transit traffic before the pandemic, and no one was ready for it,' he said.
Transport and logistics group Delo told Reuters cargo flows were constrained by low capacity on the main railway lines and bottlenecks near ports and border checkpoints.
The government has set a long-term plan to increase rail capacity. In 2018, President Vladimir Putin ordered it to boost container transit to 1.7 million TEU by 2024, a four-fold increase from 2017 levels. A draft transport strategy seen by Reuters sees flows rising to 3.7 million TEU by 2035, raising Russia's share in Asia-Europe cargo traffic to 15 per cent from 4 per cent.
To achieve these goals Russian Railways is investing RUB200 billion (US$2.8 billion) from 2019 to 2024 in its 'Transsib in 7 days' project, which aims to reduce cargo transit time from the eastern to western borders of the world's biggest country to a week, compared with the usual 11-14 days.
This is part of a bigger project worth more than RUB700 billion which Russian Railways and the government are financing from 2013.
SeaNews Turkey
With countries frantically replenishing stocks and exporting finished goods as they recover from the pandemic, global sea ports are snarling up, making rail an attractive alternative.
State monopoly Russian Railways said total container traffic transiting Russia jumped 40 per cent in the first nine months of 2021 to 782,000 TEU, and could hit a record 1 million TEU this year, according to Reuters.
'At the beginning of the year the cost of shipping goods in containers by rail between Asia and Europe was twice as low as by sea. Now it is 3.5 times (lower),' the rail company said.
Most of the growth has come along the China-Russia-Europe route, where transit volumes for the first nine months rose 47 per cent to 568,700 TEU.
But transport operators and analysts say the rapid growth has exposed infrastructure problems that could limit transit flows significantly.
These include shortages of staff - including managers and crane operators - and of rolling stock, said Alexey Bezborodov, head of Infraproject, a consultancy that analyses data and trends in transport and infrastructure.
'No one believed in such a sharp increase in transit traffic before the pandemic, and no one was ready for it,' he said.
Transport and logistics group Delo told Reuters cargo flows were constrained by low capacity on the main railway lines and bottlenecks near ports and border checkpoints.
The government has set a long-term plan to increase rail capacity. In 2018, President Vladimir Putin ordered it to boost container transit to 1.7 million TEU by 2024, a four-fold increase from 2017 levels. A draft transport strategy seen by Reuters sees flows rising to 3.7 million TEU by 2035, raising Russia's share in Asia-Europe cargo traffic to 15 per cent from 4 per cent.
To achieve these goals Russian Railways is investing RUB200 billion (US$2.8 billion) from 2019 to 2024 in its 'Transsib in 7 days' project, which aims to reduce cargo transit time from the eastern to western borders of the world's biggest country to a week, compared with the usual 11-14 days.
This is part of a bigger project worth more than RUB700 billion which Russian Railways and the government are financing from 2013.
SeaNews Turkey