Discussion Papers 2008. No. 69.
Global and Regional Roles of the Russian Transport Infrastructures
CENTRE FOR REGIONAL STUDIES
OF HUNGARIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
DISCUSSION PAPERS
No. 69
Global and Regional Roles of the
Russian Transport Infrastructures
by
Ferenc ERDŐSI
Series editor
Zoltán GÁL
Pécs
2008
1
Discussion Papers 2008. No. 69.
Global and Regional Roles of the Russian Transport Infrastructures
ISSN 0238–2008
ISBN 978 963 9899 07 0
© Ferenc Erdősi
© Centre for Regional Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
2008 by Centre for Regional Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Printed in Hungary by Sümegi Nyomdaipari, Kereskedelmi és Szolgáltató Ltd., Pécs.
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Discussion Papers 2008. No. 69.
Global and Regional Roles of the Russian Transport Infrastructures
Contents
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 5
1 The historical sea gates of Russia ................................................................................. 6
2 The problems of the necessity to use foreign ports after the disintegration of the
Soviet Union ................................................................................................................. 9
3 Own port developments and transit corridors as infrastructure development
reactions to the challenges of the national and the global economy ........................... 13
3.1 The necessity of exporting crude oil and raw material stock of strategic
importance through domestic ports .................................................................... 13
3.2 “The opening up” – the allocation of new port capacities in some coastal
areas of Russia .................................................................................................... 14
3.2.1 The concentration of ports in the Gulf of Finland and the exclave
of Kaliningrad.......................................................................................... 16
3.2.2 A compromise-based development strategy on the southern shores
(the development problems of the „remaining ports” of Black Sea
and Azov Sea) .......................................................................................... 20
3.2.3 Barents Sea and White Sea ports in peripheral position ........................... 21
3.2.4 Port developments in the Far Eastern coast of Russia .............................. 22
3.2.5 The losers of Russian port developments in the post-soviet countries ..... 24
3.2.6 The reducing transit services of Finnish ports used for Russian
foreign trade purposes
4 The Trans-Eurasian corridors as infrastructure improving Russia’s global and
macro-regional role .................................................................................................... 28
4.1 The Transsib and its potential competitors in the East-West inter-ocean
transport ............................................................................................................. 28
4.1.1 The Trans-Siberian mega railway’s functional changes and its
present role in the freight and passenger traffic between Europe and
Eastern Asia .............................................................................................. 28
4.1.2 The ‘New Silk Route” Trans-Asian Corridor as a weak potential
alternative of Transsib .............................................................................. 34
4.1.3 The Arctic Ocean (Peri-Asian) route ........................................................ 37
4.1.4 The potential consequences of the extension of Panama Canal for
the land bridge role of Russia and on the traffic of the Arctic Sea ........... 41
4.2 The North-South Corridor and the Caspian Sea ................................................. 42
4.3 Trans-Eurasian terrestrial or Peri-Asian sea route? Passing through
or bypassing Russia? (The perspectives of the freight transport route
competition between Europe and Eastern Asia) ................................................. 43
5 An
Overview .............................................................................................................. 48
References ........................................................................................................................ 49
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Discussion Papers 2008. No. 69.
Global and Regional Roles of the Russian Transport Infrastructures
List of figures
Figure 1 The shaping of sea shore and the prevalence of ice in winter on the
Eastern, Barents and White Seas ...................................................................... 7
Figure 2 The major harbours of the Russian Federation and of the independent
former states of the Soviet Union ................................................................... 10
Figure 3 The communication linkages between the Russian Exclave Kaliningrad
and Russia’s main territory ............................................................................ 11
Figure 4 The location of Kerch Strait and of the disputed Tusla Islands ...................... 12
Figure 5 New Russian ports in the Gulf of Finland ...................................................... 17
Figure 6 The harbours of the independent Baltic Countries ......................................... 26
Figure 7 The Transsib with other Trans-Eurasian corridors and the North–South
corridor ........................................................................................................... 31
Figure 8 The Trans-Eurasian semi-global multi-modal transportation route as
proposed by Zholy ......................................................................................... 35
Figure 9 The New Silk Route (TRACECA) project, the alternatives of China
– Central-Asia – East-Europe route ................................................................. 36
Figure 10 The position of the Arctic Ocean’s navigation route against the alternative
routes bypassing Asia from the South and crossing through the Panama
Canal .............................................................................................................. 39
Figure 11 The major ports of the coastal navigation routes of the Arctic Ocean and
their connections with Siberian navigable rivers ........................................... 40
Figure 12 The major routes of China’s Sea trade transport ............................................ 45
Figure 13 The longer route to be shortened by the Kra Channel crossing the
Malakka Strait ................................................................................................ 47
List of tables
Table 1
The division of Russia’s total sea trade by sea in year 2005 on the basis
of the total traffic of sea ports ........................................................................ 15
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Introduction
Russia’s geographical coverage of two continents in more than 10 thousand kilo-
metres on longitudinal axis is a unique historical heritage. Russia is no longer a
superpower in military sense and the country’s economy was very close to a total
collapse in the 1990s. The recovery of the economy since the end of the 1990s was
based on the abundance of mineral and other resources and mostly on the mas-
sive export of crude oil at an increasing price. Besides crude oil and natural gas
pipelines maritime navigation is the major carrier of bulk commodities exported
from Russia. Its efficiency largely depends on the capacity of ports and their rail-
way service routes. The ambitious ongoing transport development programme of
Russia is concentrating on investing into the infrastructure elements of the first
group operating in severely cold (but relenting with global warming) climate cir-
cumstances. The world’s largest country in a returning to normal international
political environment is practically converting its unique geographical conditions
into direct material benefits at an increasing success by playing a land bridge role
and building the necessary transport corridors between the Atlantic/Baltic Europe
– Easter Asia and also between Northern Europe Caspian Sea region and Persian
Gulf area. Making these Trans-Eurasian corridors attractive for international tran-
sit and the maximization of profits gained directly (through rendering services)
and indirectly (through the allocation of foreign capital in the corridor zones) is a
national interest. After all the development of infrastructure enabling the trans-
portation of extra heavy goods and commodities is urged both by the demands of
foreign trade and by the semi-global scale of transit services offered.
In this paper we are going to give an overview on the efforts of ‘continental’
Russia for building a sea gateway having made for several centuries to join to
world trade and for the safe manoeuvring of its empire-sized military fleet and to
find a modus vivendi compromise for the geographical constraint situation of our
time.
To what extent will Russia be able to perform the functions of transport con-
nection between Europe and Eastern Asia the two major economic powers of the
world besides the emerging new competitor route alternatives is one of the most
exciting world economic – having geostrategic implications as well – questions of
our age. To answer these questions we would like to outline some even now rec-
ognizable aspects.
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Erdősi, Ferenc : Global and Regional Roles of the Russian Transport Infrastructures.
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1 The historical sea gates of Russia
In the Eastern European Slavic region, covering several million km2-s, i.e. half a
continent, there are state formations lagging behind Western Europe that went
through an early bourgeois and industrial development and has a lively trade ac-
tivity. For these Eastern European countries, most of which had no other choice
than autarchy, the access to warm sea shores allowing their integration into inter-
national trade has been a definite effort for half a millennium. Depending on the
(spatial) relationship of the Slavic states to the Northern European and Southeast-
European or Asia Minor (lesser Asia) countries, often with regional middle
power status for centuries (Sweden, Lithuania and Turkey), the actual use of the
different seas and their ports changed.
The Lithuanian and Swedish empire closed the Baltic Sea from the Russian
state for a long time. Russia thus was forced to found the port of Arkhangelsk on
the shore of the White Sea in 1584. However, Arkhangelsk was only accessible
on the River Drina that could only be used with limitations because of the long
ice-cover in winter. Nevertheless the city became the location of several merchant
houses as a result of the balanced Russian–English relations (Johnson, 1984).
In the Russian history, the real ‘opening of the window’ to the world was done
by Peter the Great, by the foundation of St. Petersburg. The allocation of the No.
1. port of Russia was the result of a necessity, and at the construction it had to be
considered that the Gulf of Finland was not navigable for the fragile wooden ships
in 3–4 icy months of the year (Figure 1).
The Russian Empire made war against the former regional power, Turkey, for
centuries for the possession of the northern shore of the Black Sea and the larger
part of the Caspian Sea, and so for the free navigation on these seas (including the
access to the Mediterranean Sea through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles). Al-
though Odessa was founded in 1794, no sooner did it gradually become the most
important port than the last third of the 19th century, after the establishment of
adequate rail connections and the start of the mass-production of Ukrainian cere-
als competitive with the American cereals. In the Far East, Vladivostok was
founded as early as in 1860, but it was essentially a naval port with a relatively
modest commercial port (the surplus cereals produced in West Siberia was mar-
keted partly in Middle Asia and party in Europe, so only a little was exported
from the far-away Vladivostok – [Antal, 1980]).
The Tsar’s Russian Empire could much more easily keep in touch with Europe
and the farther overseas regions after the acquisition of the three Baltic States
(Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) in the late 18th and early 19th century. After the
construction of the railway, Riga became one of the most important cereal ex-
porting ports. The ice-free port of Murmansk on the shore of the Barents Sea
could only be utilised from 1916, after the railway reaching the port had been
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Erdősi, Ferenc : Global and Regional Roles of the Russian Transport Infrastructures.
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Figure 1
The shaping of sea shore and the prevalence of ice in winter on the Eastern,
Barents and White Seas
Legend: 1 – Seas, water reservoirs and navigable lakes freezing regularly in winter; 2 – The naviga-
ble parts of rivers flowing into seas 3 – The most important navigable canals.
Source: The author’s edition on the basis of World Geographic Atlas.
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Erdősi, Ferenc : Global and Regional Roles of the Russian Transport Infrastructures.
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Discussion Papers, No. 69.
built. Because of its peripheral location, however, Murmansk mostly served as a
base for the naval force. In 1918, the newly gained independence of the Baltic
states was hardly more than a political loss for the Soviet government, because
the economic importance of the ports was almost negligible, due to the complete
isolation of the Soviet Empire. The Baltic area, re-conquered by the Soviet Union
after 1940 – essentially 1944 –, was of strategic importance in the beginning, be-
cause of its proximity to Europe, later it became important in foreign trade, too.
The Soviet Union, extremely isolated in a political and social sense after World
War II, carried out an extensive economic development policy. In order to com-
pensate for the machinery necessary for the investments and then the cereals and
other foods necessary for the supply of the population, the country was forced to
export a very large amount of minerals and other raw materials, also energy car-
riers, in an amount significant on a global scale. Sea shipping became the basic
means of transport, just because of the complexity of the composition of the
commodities. Those ports became the most popular where the railways and pipe-
lines of the biggest capacity ran.
The Baltic States, at the intersection of the German and the Russian zone of in-
fluence, were able as ‘foreign departments’ of Western Europe to maintain their
traditionally higher living standards in the Eastern European environment, not last
due to their gateway functions for the current Russian/Soviet Empire. The Baltic
Region was able, both at the times of independence and when it was part of the
Empire, to profit from the “threshold” and the “gateway” position because of the
fact that Russia, short of own ports free from ice and relatively close to Western
Europe, could not avoid for its foreign trade the use of the ice-free Lithuanian
and the rarely ice-covered and with icebreakers easily clearable Estonian ports.
Although in the last decade of the existence of the Soviet Union the sea shores
making the pan-federation border from several sides allowed several versions of
foreign trade, 80% of the sea shipping of Russia still took part through the three
Baltic member states, as their geographical location was the most favourable for
reaching the Western markets. The oil export of the Soviet Union, after the ex-
pansion of oil mining in the West Siberian oil field, reached a volume that made it
worth building pipelines to the Baltic ports of Ventspils and Klaipeda, in addition
to the pipelines running to the East-Central European countries (and partly from
them to Western Europe). Also, millions of tons of crude oil arrived at several
Baltic sea ports by train (Buchofer, 1995).
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2 The problems of the necessity to use foreign ports after the
disintegration of the Soviet Union
It is a paradox that it was just Russia, determining the former empirical politics,
that became one of the main losers (or the sole main loser) of the disintegration of
the Soviet Union. Russia had to face the fact that its geographical position became
more peripheral, more northern compared to the centres of the world politics ex-
actly when in the location decisions of the market economy, the quality of the
location on the globe was appreciated so much as never before. In 1991, the state
territory of Russia became very similar to that in the times of Peter the Great, as
regards the openness to the world, coming from the limited length and location of
sea shores suitable for navigation.
Russia was shocked by great loss from three aspects:
number and loading capacity of the ports;
spatial position in relation to the most important partners of foreign trade
and
climatic conditions influencing navigation.
The ports of the Baltic region and the Black Sea, most favourable climatically,
also with the best location for reaching the foreign markets and of the biggest
capacity, are now outside the borders of the Russian Federation. All that remained
in Russian hands in the East (Baltic) Sea is St. Petersburg at the end of the Gulf of
Finland, which is covered by ice for months and can only be made navigable by
icebreakers at a relatively high cost; and the shores of the isolated, special terri-
tory of Kaliningrad, the exclave bordered by Lithuania and Poland (Figure 2).
While the political barriers of the integration to the world economy essentially
ceased to exist, the transport conditions of the connections and goods exchange
became catastrophic. Russia had a limited number of own sea ports, with unfa-
vourable locations, and was forced to use the facilities of the newly independent
neighbouring countries for transit transport. In the better case it only meant
higher transport costs and fees for the use of the ports and re-loading, but it was
not exceptional that Russia faced difficulties coming from political “malevolence”
in connection with transits from Russia.
The latter included, among other things, the refusal of the free transport be-
tween the Kaliningrad region and the motherland by Lithuania, intending to join
the European Union. In the early 1990 thus a plan to pass round Lithuania via
Poland was considered (Figure 3), but Poland, an EU and NATO member, diplo-
matically denied the implementation (referring to the threat to its nature protec-
tion area) (Buchofer, 1998). Fortunately this problem was solved after negotia-
tions with Lithuania, although Lithuania still controls the Russian transports.
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Figure 2
The major harbours of the Russian Federation and of the independent former
states of the Soviet Union
Legend: 1 – Former harbours having been remained on the territory of Russia; 2 – New harbours
having been/being built since 1993; 3 – Russian ports having been transformed form military
harbours into partially commercial ports; 4 – The most important transit ports for the foreign
economy of Russia in the Baltic states, Ukraine and Finland until the present time; 5 – Other
ports in the Baltic states, Ukraine and Georgia; 6 – Inter-sea container cargo service delivered
by direct trains (between the Baltic and Black Sea and between the Baltic Sea and the Pacific
Ocean).
Source: Edited by the author.
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Figure 3
The communication linkages between the Russian Exclave Kaliningrad
and Russia’s main territory
Legend: 1 – The Kaliningrad–Smolensk–Moscow main railway route; 2 – The main road variation
requested by the Russians (Kaliningrad–Suvalki–Grodno–Minsk–Smolensk–Moscow) but re-
fused by the Polish government; – K-k.: Kaliningrad zone.
Source: Buchofer, 1998.
From Black Sea ports only the major ones such as Novorossiysk and Tuapse
remained under Russian control while it was Ukraine that could directly benefit
from the advantages of the highest capacity and the best equipped ports such as
Odessa, Iljichevsk and Herzon. Russia could nothing else do than use the ports of
the Sea of Azov accessible through Kerch Strait only, and having poor nautical
parameters (Taganrog, Rostov). Moreover Ukraine hindered the international
traffic of the Russian ports of the Azov Sea by declaring Tusla Island lying in the
very narrow outlet of the Kerch Strait as its own part (to highlight it symbolically
the country has been garrisoning Ukrainian military troops there since year 2004)
and by regarding the navigational routes near the island also as its own national
territory. Thus, Russia could nothing else do than build a shipping canal on its
own territory through the western part of Taman Peninsula to give free way to its
own fleet (Figure 4). As a consequence that the ports of Reni and Ismail are under
Ukrainian control the Russian has lost its direct navigational contact with river
Danube. This also made the economical use of the Rhine–Main–Danube transcon-
tinental waterway opened in 1993 almost impossible for the Russians. (Since
1991 very few Russian cargo ships have been registered only on river Danube; of
the successor states of the Soviet Union the presence of Ukraine is the most
dominant – Erdősi 1995.)
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Figure 4
The location of Kerch Strait and of the disputed Tusla Islands
Source: Edited by the author.
From time to time the land transport of goods between Russia and Central,
also Western Europe is made difficult by the Ukraine, more rarely by Belarus by
only allowing the operation of the transit oil and gas pipelines with special condi-
tions and high transit fees. They sometimes use different legal and illegal methods
to make Russia pay for its road and rail transport, too.
The quicker than the world average development of the naval fleet was a pres-
tige oriented achievement of the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s.
(Commercial, fishing and research fleets were the main benefactors of this initia-
tive.) The Soviet fleet (having modern ships in more than one-third of its stock)
was the third in rank in the competition of the world’s naval fleets carrying 7.5–
8.0% of the world’s total cargo shipment (measured in tons). The establishment of
the Russian Federation brought a drastic shrinking in the size of the commercial
fleet (partly due to registering ships under ‘cheap’ foreign flags and partly due to
selling). Although several governmental decrees and development plans were
issued on the development of fleet between 1995 and 1998 almost no resources
were allocated from state funds for fleet development. The partly privatised ship-
ping companies were capable for delivering shipping orders of moderate size and
for the retirement of old ships only. The registration of fleets under foreign flags
was a longer process. Of the naval fleet with 25.5 million dwt capacity in year
1991 only a fleet with 6.6 million dwt capacity had remained in Russian hands
and of them the ratio of container and RoRo ships is very low (Shipping… 2006;
Sovcomflot... 2008).
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3 Own port developments and transit corridors as infrastruc-
ture development reactions to the challenges of the national
and the global economy
The political changes of the 1990s raised a double challenge for Russia when
defining the focal points of its transport infrastructure developments:
should Russia create the adequate sea port capacities in its own territory,
eliminate the need to use the neighbouring transit countries and the con-
comitant national security and foreign trade risks (national aspect); or
should it play a transit link, using the advantages of its large territory cover-
ing areas in two continents, take up a landbridge role establishing transcon-
tinental corridors among the dominant centres of the world economy and
other regions. This would also promote Russia’s integration into the global
economy (aspect of meeting the global challenges).
These two tasks can be implemented in a common system, as some of the ideal
terminals of the transit corridors are the new sea ports.
3.1 The necessity of exporting crude oil and raw material stock of strategic
importance through domestic ports
The outdated industry of Russia hopelessly collapsed and the country’s economic
position entirely depends on the profits gained from crude oil export. As it was
seen from the world economic trends of the late 1990s Russia is having a gradu-
ally increasing role in the global market of crude oil as a producer. As forecasts
say the oil import of the United States from the Middle East would be replaced by
Russia. Oil export is a major sector in the foreign trade of the Russian Federation
which is further complemented by the export of carbon, minerals, fertilizers and
wood. For this reason increasing oil port capacities partly through the expansion
of existing ports partly by building new ports is a priority task of the governmen-
tal programmes of own port building and the redirection of foreign trade oriented
shipment into Russian ports. Redirecting 95% of the total oil export through its
own ports is the final objective of Russia (Deeg, 2004) but this plan has been
completed by 1977 in 77% only (DVZ, 10 January 2008).
The following two factors are pressuring Russia for the redirection and ‘na-
tionalization’ of its oil shipment:
The strict transit rules set up by the Baltic states (and partly Ukraine and
Belorussia) such as the arbitrarily levied high transit and port loading
charges/utilization fees (the ownership and utilization rights of pipeline
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sections on the territory of post-Soviet states have been transferred into the
competence of the given state.)
In case of any political/economic conflict (or in ecological vis major case)
the Baltic States may turn off the pipelines at any time. Such a case may
threaten Russia’s national security so its prevention is its own due interest.
The export of oil through foreign ports costs several millions of dollars for
Russia annually. To save this amount is a national interest. The financial return of
investments into new port development projects within a rational time period will
be granted not only by far more favourable shipping and harbouring costs (while
in 2002 for pumping one ton of crude oil onto a ship 4.70 USD was charged in
Butinga (Lithuania) it cost only 1.94 USD in Primorsk (a port located next to
Saint Petersburg) (Farkas, 2002) but also by the transit cargo shipment delivered
to the countries of Central Asia as well. The Central Asian oil producer countries
– especially Kazakhstan maintaining excellent relations with Russia – for keeping
their foreign economy in balance are maintaining a diversity in their oil export
strategy (by delivering crude oil into the East Mediterranean region, the Persian
Gulf, the Pacific Ocean, the Baltic Sea region) so as they could eliminate any
crisis situation arising from the ‘jamming of any pipelines’ by an alternative solu-
tion for accessing the global markets.
3.2 “The opening up” – the allocation of new port capacities in some coastal
areas of Russia
Although Russia was seriously hit by the hardships of economic crisis in the
1990s even in 1993 a large-scale port development scheme was shaping up in a
form of a government decree setting up an objective to decrease the annual 280–
300 million tons of port traffic generated by Russia in ports abroad to only 5 mil-
lion tons within ten years. (Against all the forecasts Russia’s total port traffic hit
the value of 507 million tons in 2005 – Table 1). The realisation of the project
targeted at a radical increase of port capacities started very slowly. This can be
explained not only by the serious economic crisis and the absence of capital but
also by the behaviour of Russian entrepreneurs located in the Baltic States and
strongly involved in the transit of crude oil. This group was not interested in
building Russian ports and they were doing their best for delaying this process
(Farkas, 2002). An increase in the speed of the realisation of port development
projects and spectacular results have been achieved only as a result of heavy state
subventions, of the improvement of the general economic situation and of the
emergence of domestic investors at the turn of the 1990s and 2000s. As the vol-
ume of exported goods has tripled during a ten year period Russia was unable to
carry out a significant breakthrough in reducing the amount of oil export through
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foreign ports and in year 2007 still nearly 70 million tons of crude oil and oil re-
finery products (23% of the total amount of exported oil) were shipped through
the use of foreign ports (Statistical Yearbook of Federation Russland, 2007).
Until recently Russia was forced to use foreign ports in the highest percentage
on the Baltic Sea for foreign trade purposes (including Baltic Sea ports and the
sea ports of Finland and Poland) but the percentage figure of foreign port use in
the (Ukrainian and Georgian) ports of Black and Azov Sea is not much behind it
either (Table 1). On the Arctic Ocean Russia uses only domestic ports for foreign
trade purposes and on the coasts of the Pacific Ocean the majority of Russian
goods are exported through domestic ports (recently some ports of China and
South Korea are used to exports goods of Russian origin).
Table 1
The division of Russia’s total sea trade by sea in year 2005 on the basis of the
total traffic of sea ports
Sea
Own port traffic
Foreign port traffic
Total
million t
%
million t
%
million t
%
Baltic Sea
143
69.1
64
30.9
207
100.0
Arctic Ocean
85
100.0
–
–
85
100.0
Pacific
Ocean
72
76.6 22
23.4 94
100.0
Black and Azov Sea
77
70.6
32
29.4
109
100.0
Caspian Sea
8
66.6
4
33.4
12
100.0
Total
385 75.9 122 4.1 507 100.0
Source: The author’s own calculation on the basis of sea port traffic data.
For increasing the efficiency of foreign trade Russian port development pro-
grammes were focusing on the still Russian territories of the Baltic Sea. (For Rus-
sian cargo ships the biggest direct foreign destination is Rotterdam). To this hub
oil is shipped by tankers of 45–70 thousand dwt from Baltic Sea ports but from
there oil is transferred to super-tankers of 250–350 thousand dwt capacity and
shipped further to the United States and to East Asian countries – Japan, China,
Taiwan, South-Korea etc. New ports are/have been built only on the sea shores of
the Gulf of Finland. On the coasts of Barents, White, Azov and Black Sea and of
the Pacific Ocean only the modernisation or the enlargement of the existing ports
(e.g. building new terminals) are set forth as a target.
According to our calculations the spatial breakdown of Russia’s extended port
capacities (new and enlarged ports) is showing the following pattern:
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In the outer part of St. Petersburg, on the sea shore of the Gulf of Finland
between the Finnish and Estonian borders it is cca. 64%
On the European part of the internal seas of the Arctic Ocean (Barents and
White Sea) it is cca. 2%
In the Kaliningrad Exclave it is 2%
On the Azov Sea shore on the Russian part of the Caucasian section of
Black Sea it is cca. 25%
On the northern shore of Caspian Sea it is cca. 2%
On the Russian sea shore of the Pacific Ocean it is cca. 5%.
3.2.1 The concentration of ports in the Gulf of Finland and the exclave
of Kaliningrad
The eastern sea shore of the Gulf of Finland has an outstanding importance from
the aspects of Russia’s sea navigation (despite of its unfavourable natural and
climatic conditions) due to the aspects as follows:
This area comprises St. Petersburg, Russia’s second largest city (having
traditionally good relations with West-Europe) with 4–5 million inhabitants
including its agglomeration zone;
The ports of this area are located the nearest to Moscow, the Russian capital
and metropolis, to Russia’s Central Industrial Zone and these ports offer the
best connections to the global markets even for the mines and industrial
plants of the Northern Ural region;
St. Petersburg is the historical centre of this newly formed group of ports
which was enlarged by several new members during the past few years. St. Pe-
tersburg is still Russia’s high reputational harbour with direct connection to the
city but its peri-urban satellite ports (some of them transformed from military into
civilian harbour) (such as Bronha, Gorskaia, Lomonosov, Kronstadt) are further
increasing the metropolitan city’s navigational potential (Figure 5). With a transit
cargo traffic of 62 million tons or 1.74 millions of TEU St. Petersburg is the busi-
est port of Eastern Europe. Although the port’s contribution to the export of oil
product chemicals, and timber export and to bulk freight transit traffic is very
important but its major profile seems to be specialised in piece cargo shipment
(resulting from car and machine import) and in container transfer (Sea Port...
2008).
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Figure 5
New Russian ports in the Gulf of Finland
Legend: 1 – New and enlarged container terminals; 2 – Port for mixed and bulk freight shipment;
3 – Oil tanker terminal; 4 – Port for international ferries; 5 – Oil carrier pipeline.
Source: Edited by the author.
Although the port complex of St. Petersburg was expanded several times its
traffic volume is fairly exceeding its nominal capacity. Due to the lack of free
space an increase in the port’s capacity can be achieved by technical modernisa-
tion only and by improving the port’s accessibility by sea and by improving its
road/railway connections. For increasing the intensity of the port’s use, the port’s
introductory canal was deepened and widened so as to increase the port’s present
capacity to accommodate maximum 35–45 thousand dwt or 2500 TEU capacity
container ships to 70 thousand or 5000 TEU capacity container ships. Compared
to the western parts of the Gulf of Finland here (due to freshwater and drift car-
ried by river Neva) the winter freezing period of the sea takes longer time which
incurs higher icebreaking and river-bed sweeping costs. However all these disad-
vantages resulting from unfavourable physical and natural circumstances are out-
weighed by the port group’s favourable from Russia’s aspect geographical posi-
tion and its strategic value for foreign economy.
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St. Petersburg by introducing cargo ferry/RoRo services is trying to establish
direct cargo shipment connections (by bypassing the Baltic States and Poland)
with West-Europe, especially with Germany (Kiel).
As the ports of St. Petersburg area were unable for servicing all the cargo
shipment demands of the Bay of Finland even in the early 1990s the building of
several new ports started at that time.
In Ust'-Luga, lying 150 kilometres southwest from St. Petersburg on the Esto-
nian border, a mixed profiled megaport project was launched in the 1990s in a
form of private enterprise. The construction was interrupted and adjusted to a
more limited capacity. By the beginning of our century the loading terminals for
chemical fertilizer, timber and (Siberian) coal export had been finished and higher
priority was given to investments for building terminals for ferry shipping trains
and road vehicles as they offer higher profits, shorter investment return period and
a more adequate compliance to the modernizing structure of the economy. As
forecasts say the container loading capacity of Russia’s St. Petersburg megaport
may go as high as 3 million TEU and by 2015 it may even increase to 6 million
TEU (Umschlagkomplex… 2007). In domestic relation the direct ferry services
between Ust’-Luga and Kaliningrad have special importance as they are guaran-
teeing the continuous daily supply of the partly isolated Russian exclave. Fore-
casts are estimating 120.6 million tons of total cargo traffic by year 2015 which
will consist of three major types of cargo such as (in order of their quantity) con-
tainer and piece cargo, oil/oil products and bulk freight. Another segment would
consist of wooden/timber products and RoRo ferry traffic (Angerstrebte… 2008).
Ust’-Luga thus is a very much diversified port complex, compared to the nearby
Vistina (Figure 5), where only one oil loading terminal of an annual capacity of
16 million tons is built (Mehr Öl… 2003).
Later on the northern shore of the Gulf of Finland was also selected as a site
for building new oil exporting ports. (Some experts are referring to this phenome-
non as a kind of ‘Gulf oil fever’ which has infected even the investors of the
northern shore). In Primorsko, located near Viborg, a port complex of high na-
tional importance has been operating since 2001 thanks to among others the
President of the State’s contribution. These complexes planned for a capacity of
12–13 million tons per year are now loading 57 million tons of crude oil to tank-
ers annually. The further expansion of the capacity of Primorsk depends on the
500 kilometre long oil pipeline between Jaroslavl and Primorsk built as a part and
side line of the ‘Baltic Pipeline System’ which encouraged Rosneft to build an oir
refinery plant with its partners (Mehr Öl… 2003). The total container cargo traffic
of Primorsk together with Janino was over 1 million TEU in year 2007 (Kulke-
Fiedler, 2008). [However we consider this figure false and unrealistic]
In Visock, only 30 kilometres away from Primorsk Lukoil built a 13 million
tons per year (maximum 80 thousand dwt) capacity (serviceable by ships) oil
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transferring terminal by 2004 – which by now has been extended by a coal termi-
nal (with an annual cargo traffic of 3–4 million tons) (Ölhafen... 2005).
After the completion of a second Baltic Sea oil pipeline (which is now under
construction) starting from the northern oil resources of Russia the oil export vol-
ume of Russian ports along the Bay of Finland may double (Radloff, 2006). The
exported oil will be shipped to recipients by tankers of maximum 50–100 thou-
sand dwt. capacity. Although technically/nautically it would be possible to navi-
gate ships of this size category to their final destinations on remote continents
without any stops but due to economies of scale reasons the majority of exported
oil is shipped to Rotterdam first where oil is transferred into giant supertankers as
this kind of delivery method offers cheaper cargo delivery costs on interconti-
nental routes. In 2114 more than 40 million tons of Russian oil and oil products
were transferred in Rotterdam into mega-sized oil tankers taking their way to the
ports of the East-Asian continent and of the United States. (An article reported on
this phenomenon under a strange title of ‘Rotterdam Bathing in Russian Oil’ –
DVZ, 30 October 2004).
The building of Russia’s number one port complex on a sea shore accessible in
winter with high costs only should be regarded as a necessity for making a com-
promise between rough weather conditions and the most optimal navigational
routes serving for foreign trade purposes.
From this aspect (the access to Europe and through the continent to the west-
ern hemisphere), the ice-free ports of the isolated Kaliningrad exclave have a
much better location, but their construction bears a higher political risk, because
of the foreign environment. Nevertheless Russia tries to make use the potentials
lying in Kaliningrad, by the conversion (for civil use) of the infrastructure of the
port areas serving military purposes (in Kaliningrad that is only accessible
through a 30-kilometre long sea canal and even more in Baltiysk, easily accessible
from the sea). However, the capacities are rather narrow compared to those in the
St. Petersburg area (Radloff, 2008).
In the new political situation Baltiysk the ice-free port became a much more
valuable port of Russia than ever before as this is the closest one of all the Rus-
sian ports to West-Europe the biggest sales and export market of Russian minerals
and crude oil. Moreover this port is servicing not only its closest hinterland in
Russia but it is also the most suitable sea gateway for Belorussia. The project of
increasing the sea channel’s depth to 10.5 meters for accommodating medium-
sized oil tankers will be finished soon. The port complex of Kaliningrad is
planned to be expanded by another deep water port unit on Vostochny Peninsula
ready to accommodate over 100 thousand dwt ships (Weiterer Hafen… 2007).
The new ferry terminal will connect the Kaliningrad area into the international
and domestic ferry service network with a service coverage ranging from St. Pe-
tersburg until Saßnitz and Luebeck (Fähreterminal... 2003). 85% of the total
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freight volume of the three ports of the Kaliningrad area consists of metals, iron,
hardware products, chemical fertilizers and food industry products. The major
destinations of export are Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands and Spain (Zuwä-
chse... 2004).
In the spirit of the Russian government’s complex transport development plan
for the Kaliningrad district the Russian Railways (RZD) is doing its best to redi-
rect the flow of goods to rail by introducing a cheaper tariff system. The economic
importance of Kaliningrad as a western final node of the trans-Eurasian corridor
between the Baltic Sea and the Pacific nowadays has further been increased by
the emergence of automotive industry demanding an extensive network of sub-
contractors.
3.2.2 A compromise-based development strategy on the southern shores
(the development problems of the „remaining ports” of Black Sea
and Azov Sea)
During the past Soviet era the traffic volumes of the Black Sea and Azov Sea ports
used to supersede the ports of St. Petersburg. Since the collapse of the Soviet
Empire the Black Sea ports still in Russian hands do not come close to those in
the Bay of Finland in terms of traffic, either, because they are located far from the
large shipways of world trade (the closest such shipway crosses the Mediterra-
nean Sea from West to East). An amount of maximum 30 million tons of Russian
goods for foreign trade flows through the Black Sea ports of Ukraine (Odessa,
Ilyichevsk, Nikolayev, Sevastopol and Kerch) annually.
Of all the Black and Azov Sea ports having remained in Russian hands Novo-
rossiysk has the most favourable geographical location since Ukraine won its
independence. This is because it is accessible from the open sea and its hinterland
is highly valuable from economical aspects (the agriculture of Kuban’, the crude
oil resources of the northern highlands of the Caucasus the area’s multifunctional
cities surviving pretty well the economic depression period). However, its devel-
opment is held back the instable political and economic situation in its hinterland,
Chechnya, which has a negative influence on the neighbouring regions too. The
port having once been famous for its cement export can easily accommodate the
modern technologies of transport as recently its container cargo traffic has in-
creased by 30–50%. The plans of increasing cargo traffic from 88.5 thousand
TEU to 300 thousand TEU by 2009/2010 can be accomplished by building a new
container terminal which is now under construction (DVZ, 12 February 2004).
This port will be connected to crude oil fields in the western periphery of the Ural
region by an oil carrier pipeline. The port’s 50 million tons annual cargo traffic
resulting mostly from pumping oil into tankers is slightly lower than of the port of
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St. Petersburg but the bulk freight (chemical fertilizers) and package freight cargo
traffic is continuously growing thanks to the mega projects having been launched
in the region in the early years of our century (Hafen Novorossiysk... 2007).
90% of the cargo traffic of port Tuapse, lying south-east from Novorossiysk
but more difficult to access due to the nearby high mountains, consists of export
goods (oil, oil products, coal, metals, sugar, cereals) (www.ceebd.co.uk/ceebd/
tpstport.htm).
The geographic location of the Azov Sea ports (Rostov, Azov, Taganrog)
on the one hand is advantageous as they are lying the closest to the terres-
trial industrial agglomerations of Ukraine and the Volga–Don canal pro-
vides good waterway connection to the major cities of river Volga,
on the other hand is disadvantageous as the use of the shallow watered
Kerch Strait is not only a very difficult navigational task but also very ex-
pensive. Russia has to pay 150 million euro to Ukraine for using Ukrainian
waterways and ports in the Kerch Strait.
For all that Russia considers these ports very important as the benefits coming
out of the proximity to the big industrial regions of the Ural and Volga are out-
weighing the higher than normal costs of shipping.
Taganrog has the best foreign contacts with the countries of the Mediterranean
Sea. Marine boat services are connecting it even with ports on the Caspian Sea
(www.taganrog.seaport.ru/services.phtml). The building of a port specialized for
the forwarding of chemicals has also started (In Taman... 2007).
3.2.3 Barents Sea and White Sea ports in peripheral position
Among the European sea gateways of Russia, the development of the ports of the
Barents and the White Sea (both being parts of the Arctic Ocean) were given
much less attention because of
their peripheral location, their distance from the major markets of world
trade, including Western Europe;
their distance from the economic centre of Russia, the unfavourable condi-
tions of their access and
partly the seasonality of their operation, due to the half-year ice cover (in
the case of the White Sea).
In this northern macro-region basically there are two larger ports that could be
taken into consideration when implementing Russia’s port development concept:
Murmansk and Arkhangelsk.
Arkhangelsk the biggest timber exporter of the Western Ural region is chang-
ing into a mixed freight forwarding port. Its traffic had doubled by the beginning
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of our century. In summer seasons technical equipment is shipped by marine
boats from Archangelsk to the oil and gas fields of Pechora province and Eastern
Siberia. The Rosneft Shipping Company is forwarding the crude oil of Uhta col-
lected in Archangelsk to Murmansk by small tanker ships and there in Murmansk
the oil is pumped into giant tankers for shipping further to Rotterdam (Ar-
changelsk... 2007).
If a 1500 kilometre long oil carrier pipeline was built on the ‘remote lands of
the north’ with an annual capacity of 80 million tons – which idea is now strongly
opposed by Rosneft – then Murmansk could grow into one of the world’s largest
– comparable in size with those of the Maracaibo Bay – oil exporting ports (Bau
des Murmansker... 2004). But now (2007) the annual 7–8 million tons of coal
shipped annually to here from the Spitzbergen and the Pechora River Basin are
yet by far a greater volume category than the annual 2 million tons of oil loaded
here (Kohle Umschlag... 2007). Of the smaller ports of the Barents and White Sea
Drezvianks, Vitino and Kandalah are those that participate on the oil export busi-
ness of Russia (Hafen Kandalaksha… 2007).
3.2.4 Port developments in the Far Eastern coast of Russia
As radical geopolitical changes raised difficulties for the marine transport of Rus-
sia both on the western and southern coasts the accessibility, the maintenance and
use of Russian ports on the Pacific coast for foreign trade and international transit
purposes became a strategic issue. The Russian section of the Pacific coast as a
macro-region has a special dynamism, its foreign trade oriented development has
significantly increased the value of Russian ports on Far East. However the utili-
zation of the ports’ potentials is only one element of the general development of
the Far Eastern marine economy. The capacities of the terrestrial transport routes
connecting them with European territories – their hinterland – are equally impor-
tant economic factors. As the cargo loading and storage capacities of the far-east-
ern ports of Russia failed to satisfy the demands the Russian government had to
face serious traffic jams and significant financial losses in railway transportation.
The vast majority of shipping traffic is concentrated in the ports of the south-
western regions of the Russian part of the Pacific region located very close to
China and South Korea (Vladivostok, Nahodka, Vanino, Vostochnyj). The com-
mercial port of Vladivostok, the final station of the Trans-Siberian Railways, once
famous for its military port, looks back to a hundred years of history but
Vostochny, founded only a few decades ago is by far the busiest one of all. Nev-
ertheless, the port complex’s total shipping traffic (54 million tons in 2005) is not
higher than that of St. Petersburg. 4/5 of the port’s traffic is made up of solid and
1/5 of liquid products.
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Vladivostok the headquarters of the Pacific fleet was used for some 60 years as
a closed military area and it was only the 1990s when it was changed into a ‘ci-
vilian’ port. As the port is lying next to a rather narrow bay the geographical con-
ditions for its expansion are rather unfavourable. Nevertheless, the port ha re-
cently been equipped for loading and unloading container ships on a regular basis
which is a new service added to the existing bulk freight and package freight
transfer services (www.wmtp.ru). In 2006 the port’s traffic reached a value of
some 150 thousand TEU. The spare parts of the Japanese Toyota Car Manufac-
turing Co. are transferred through this terminal to West-Russian car companies
(www.fesco.ru). Although logistic experts and regional development plans desig-
nated Nahodka, lying only a few kilometres from Vladivostok, as a future far
eastern commercial centre of Russia but today the port’s existing capacities are
limiting to perform oil exporting functions only. The deep water port of the city of
Nahodka surrounded by mountains makes this place an ideal site for accommo-
dating large tankers (DVZ, 7 July 2004).
The port of Vostochny was founded in 1974 a few kilometres away north from
Nahodka. This is the most famous final station of container delivery service be-
tween Europe and the Far East delivered by the Transsib railways. Unlike Na-
hodka and Vladivostok this port has fairly good possibilities for expansion. The
port offers a wide palette of loading services ranging from bulk freight to contain-
ers. The majority of shipping traffic here is generated by exporting Russian coal
to Japan and South-eastern Asia – which proved to be an excellent business –
while the volume of oil, natural and aluminium export is lower (www.vics.ru).
The new container terminal of Vostochny is one of the country’s most advanced
ones and reached an annual traffic of 340 thousand TEU in year 2007.
On the remote northern parts of the Russian Pacific coast only the port of Ma-
gadon is worth mentioning. But this port has no railway connection to Russia
therefore its services are limited to a very small area only. On the sea coast lying
opposite Sakhalin Island (along Tatar Strait) Sovetskaya Gavan’ is the most out-
standing of the tiny (mostly fishing) ports of the area which is connected by a
railway sideline to the Amur Valley (and Transsib) railways. In the 1970s high
hopes were cherished and big plans were prepared concerning the development of
this port in the expectation of the improvement of Soviet-Japanese commercial
relations and of the economy of Sakhalin Island. Only very few elements of the
development plan of that time have been realized ad the port’s traffic is lower
now than it was in the 180s. Traffic is generated here only by the ferry service
connecting the port with Sakhalin Island.
Today the food and public goods supply of the far eastern part of Russia is
delivered from China and South-eastern Asia. For this reason the ports of Vanino
and Magadon have been equipped for transferring cold-storage containers (DVZ,
7 July 2007).
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3.2.5 The losers of Russian port developments in the post-soviet countries
In the 1980s, the three Baltic States within the Soviet Union played a gateway
role for the Slavic region behind them, from which they benefited substantially.
The value of the goods transited through these three states amounted to 60% of
the national income of the region, and 8–10% of the population was connected to
the Russian transit in some way. The largest capacity oil pipelines of the Soviet
Union were built here, ending in their own ports. Also, the railways and roads
running from Russia to the Baltic ports were among the best ones (Erdősi, 2005).
The ports of the Baltic region thus played the role for the Slavic region that the
Northern Sea ARA ports (especially Rotterdam) play for Western Europe/Ger-
many, and even Central Europe.
Although the foreign trade of the successor states of the Soviet Union declined
dramatically after the serious economic crisis in the 1990s, the Baltic ports man-
aged to save their relative importance by letting 76% of the westwards goods
traffic of Russia and 5–12% of the similar traffic of Belarus and the Ukraine (a
total of approximately 70 million tons of goods) flow through them in 1997. Al-
though the Baltic states, in a fear that the diversion of the transit traffic to the
Russian ports would deprive them of a large revenue, started to forecast a crisis in
the late 1990s, a clear decline in traffic did not take places until 2003. The only
port really sensitively hit by a decline was Ventspils, where the amount of coming
oil gradually decreased after 2000, due to the rising transit transport costs and port
fees, and then in 2003 the pipeline was closed by the Russian Transneft pipeline
transport company (Kulke-Fiedler, 2003). In Tallinn and other ports, on the other
hand, traffic has stagnated or even slightly increased in the recent times.
A real turn occurred in 2003/2004, when the new Russian ports started to op-
erate at full capacity and were able to absorb a larger proportion of the more and
more dynamic goods export. From the summer of 2004, both in the Baltic states
and Finland, a clear drop in the volume of the Russian transit could be observed
(Erdősi, 2005).
The three Baltic states have not been able yet to create a common platform
against the Russian transport policy. In order to avoid or at least alleviate the
unfavourable consequences, they have reacted by single measures, motivated by
their own interests and possibilities. Of course this is the adequate behaviour in a
market economy primarily built on competition. The losing countries used differ-
ent ways to slow down this unfavourable process. The port development plans
emerging in 2004 demonstrate that the Baltic states did not fall into lethargy
when the competition started to become tough. Instead, they technically further
develop their existing ports in order to able to offer more efficient and higher
quality services, they strengthen their positions by expanding the existing ports
with more state-of-the-art terminals and logistic centres. In fact, Lithuania is
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planning to build a new port, 13 kilometres north of the seaside resort, Palenga. In
addition to goods reloading, it will be the R & D centre of environmental tech-
nologies in connection with oil reloading (DZV 23. November 2004). Of the Bal-
tic Sea ports Klaipeda in the proximity of the “turn” of the East Sea (Figure 6.)
has the best chances for an international turntable role. This port has the longest
traditions of sea ferry connections to German ports, and most of the East Sea ports
from Sweden to St. Petersburg are easily available from here, as well. Goods flow
to this port from the north and the southwest on the land (along the future “Via
Baltica”), and this port is also the starting point of the continental “bridge” be-
tween the East and the Black Sea, of the container trains and other goods shipping
direct trains heading for the ports of Ilyichevsk and Odessa, making it unneces-
sary to pass round Europe from the west. Klaipeda has been able to attract a large
part of the traffic of the Belarus and the Latvian ports, so much that now the port
can play a “gateway to the world” role for the Belarus (Hafen Klaipeda 2003).
Moreover, Klaipeda made an agreement with the nearby port of Kaliningrad on
business cooperation, on launching common Eurasian freight train services and on
concerted action on western markets (Zuwäsche... 2004). It is strongly probable
that a good cooperation may be established between the Russian ports of the
southern coast of the Bay of Finland and the nearby Estonian ports on the basis of
mutual interests. A functional restructuring has true reality in this matter which
means that the losses of revenues arising from the expected heavily drop of bulk
freight traffic can be partly be compensated by increasing the traffic of more
profitable, more valuable parcelled freights and container goods and by the intro-
duction of new logistic services for which there is still a demand in Russia.
Ventspils in Latvia is trying to compensate the losses incurred by the missing
oil revenues by increasing the dry goods traffic (Ventspils is already one of the
biggest nitrogen fertiliser exporter and also has an outstanding position in for-
warding Brazilian fruit juice concentrates to Russia) and satisfying the transport
demands of the Western European, especially German producing companies and
hypermarkets locating in the Baltic region, by the opening of new ferry lines (5
RoRo lines per week to Nynasham is Sweden and 2 lines to Lübeck). A lot is
expected of the 4 special economic zones realised in the country with EU support.
One element in the sectoral restructuring of the port is the creation of a new col-
lege providing port logistics and port management training, a maritime academy,
i.e. the intellectual infrastructure supporting the basic activity (Kulke-Fiedler,
2004).
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Figure 6
The harbours of the independent Baltic Countries
Legend: 1 – Container terminals; 2 – Mixed bulk freight load; 3 – Oil and oil products terminals;
4 – Oil pipeline; 5 – Oil product pipeline; 6 – Oil refinery; 7 – Frozen sea the winters.
Source: ANNEP 2001. European Petroleum Year Book, 2001. Hamburg/Wien. Urban Verlag
GmbH. Volume 31.
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In addition to the Baltic States, a significant part of the foreign trade traffic of
Russia has flowed through the south Finnish ports. Since Russia has been trying
to use its own ports, the transit role of Finland has decreased in the Russian ex-
ports (especially since 1999). For example, since the start of the operation of the
fertiliser reloading terminal in St. Petersburg, these items have been missing in
Finland. Nevertheless in 2002 still 5.6 million tons of Russian export and import
goods turned up in the Finnish ports, and approximately 70% of them concen-
trated in the terminals of Kotka and Hamina (Gegenwind… 2003). With the ac-
cession of the Baltic States Finland lost its privilege of being the sole EU member
neighbour of Russia, but a more important factor was the transition of the struc-
ture of the transit traffic generated by the Russian economy towards less bulk
goods. Despite this, still 40% of the total freight ton volume of the Finnish Rail-
ways is goods transported from or to Russia (Kulke-Fiedler, 2004). On the other
hand, a rather modest (6.5%) proportion is made by Russian transit in the traffic
of the Finnish ports (Radloff, 2004).
Despite the fact that the relationship between Russia and the Ukraine is not
free from conflicts, based on the different economic interests, there are no strong
efforts for the time being in the Black Sea region to divert the significant part of
the annual 38–40 million tons of Russian transit from the Ukrainian to the Rus-
sian ports. Recently the Russian governments has realised that the use of the
Ukrainian ports with a surplus capacity is more economical on the basis of the
transport integration of the two countries than the forced development of the
Black and Azovian Sea Russian ports, which offer unfavourable conditions, with
the exception of Novorossiysk (Figure 2) (Sjögren, 2004a). The Ukraine, expect-
ing Russian, Belarus, and even Finnish and Scandinavian transit goods, is plan-
ning the construction of container terminals of extremely large capacity compared
to the existing ones (Sjögren 2004b). The soon to be built rail tunnel beneath the
Kerch Strait, connecting the Kuban Region with the Crimean Peninsula and pri-
marily serving bilateral goods and personal movements, would be good for transit
too. The pipeline situated in the tunnel would carry the oil of Groznyy to Odessa,
making the oil supply of the South Ukrainian refineries cheaper (Sjögren, 2004c).
However since the end of 2006 the Russians are using Ukrainian railway ser-
vices and ports in a decreasing rate as the prices of transit services have signifi-
cantly increased. At present time it cannot be anticipated whether this is a tempo-
rary or long-term regression process. The latter one seems to be verified by set-
ting up new capacities in the Russian ports of Black Sea at an unusual speed.
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4 The
Trans-Eurasian
corridors as infrastructure improving
Russia’s global and large regional role
Due to its unfavourable climatic endowments, Russia cannot become a real mari-
time power, despite its extremely long Arctic Ocean coastline. In order to coun-
terbalance this situation, Russia is trying to gain global positions by making use
of its continental location, constructing West–East and North–South trans-
Eurasian corridors, increasing their role and establishing a global logistic cen-
tre/turntable in their interchanges. These mega-corridors, in addition to their
global and large regional functions, can play several national level roles, as well:
these corridors serve the co-operation of the huge regions operating on the
basis of their own local and regional interests, the actually serve the cohe-
sion within the empire;
the intensity of the home transport and the export/import transport together
does not reach in several sections the level that provides enough revenue to
cover at least the costs, thus transit substantially improving the capacity use
and increasing revenues, i.e. economy is definitely needed, especially for
sustaining the Transsib; also,
the corridors are irreplaceable regional development and spatial structure
shaping forces, not so much because of the direct extra revenues coming
from contract transport but because of the capital that they attract.
4.1 The Transsib and its potential competitors in the inter-ocean transport
4.1.1 The Trans-Siberian mega railway’s functional changes and its present role
in the freight and passenger traffic between Europe and Eastern Asia
By building the world’s largest railway line under extremely severe weather cir-
cumstances with enormously high costs the Russian Empire planned to enforce its
own national interests and intended to use the new mega-infrastructure for do-
mestic transport purposes. This was necessitated by the difficulties this 19th cen-
tury empire had to face arising from its over-sized dimensions, from the problems
of administrating and defending of this huge Siberian territory (e.g. extremely
long borders) and from the several problems of exploiting and using its natural
resources.
Strengthening the Empire’s internal cohesion, the administrative governance
of Siberia, the presence of military forces and the potential mobilization of troops
with several hundred thousands of men and their weapons to the conflict zone in
case of war, the conversion of political power into economic space by the coloni-
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zation of nomad native inhabitants living in sparsely populated areas and by the
exploitation of their agriculture, mining and industry were all among the motives
of railway building in Siberia. After all the homogenisation of the spatial diversity
of the economy with the above-mentioned reasons were such issues on the agenda
which could be solved only by connecting the Empire’s capital city with the Em-
pire’s military port on the Pacific coast by a giant railway line. For reducing costs
only a single line was built on the most optimal from technological and economi-
cal aspects pathway and connecting all the provinces’ administrative seats was out
of the plan’s intentions. (From this reason for example, Tomsk, the administra-
tive/cultural centre of West-Siberia was not accessible by rail and it was only later
when a railway sideline was built to connect the city with the Trans-Siberian line
(Pechterew–Scharapow, 2001).
The eastern section of Transsib at its initial phase reached Vladivostok and
Port Arthur military ports through Manchuria and it was only in 1917 when the
Transsib’s course was changed so as to take its whole route on Russian territories
(Fadejev, 2003).
The Transsib’s first positive effects on Siberia’s economy were felt by the first
years of the 20th century. Its benefits were first experienced in stock breeding
industry. With relocating several hundred thousand poor peasants to Siberia the
Russian government could not only eliminate the threat of political tensions aris-
ing from wide social classes’ living under poor social circumstances in some
European provinces of Russia but also could involve vast territories into agricul-
tural production. After a short time the figure of the West-Siberian per capita cat-
tle stock was 4–5 times higher than that of Russia’s European side and the value
of Siberian butter production was higher than of the total value of the well-famed
Siberian gold mining. Rail transport had significant role in exporting Siberian
butter to West-Europe. The earlier heavy demand of using waterway transport
services was lightened and by year 1914 the ratio of rail transport service in cereal
export reached 50%.
The increasing number of Siberian inhabitants from 4.6 million to 7.6 and of
the inhabitants of the far-eastern provinces of Russia from 0.9 to 1.6 million be-
tween 1897 and 1914 is also to a great extent due to the Siberian railways’ role in
the booming of Siberian economy. The proximity of railway created favourable
conditions for industrial coal mining and processing industries. The rising urbani-
zation process created several dozens of cities and several hundred of small
towns.
Although even during the interwar period significant mining and industrial de-
velopment started along the Trans-Siberian railway but it was in the 1950s when
it changed into the real corridor of modern economy which was also facilitated by
the hydro-energy generated by the local big power stations. Energy and transport
demanding industries (such as aluminium and non-ferrous metallurgy, electro
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steel manufacturing, heavy chemical industry) created a chain system along the
Transsib line but since the 1970s/1980s knowledge and innovative industries fur-
ther increased the transport corridor’s value (such as the academic city in Novosi-
birsk for example).
The mega railway’s military strategic role has been manifested several times
during its history. It was seen in the early 1900s first when even unfinished and
with poor capacities did an extremely valuable service for the Russian Army being
in war with Japan and then at the turn of the 1910/1920s the armies of the civil
war were fighting for its proprietorship.
During the Second World War Transsib rendered a special military supply ser-
vice for the Red Army troops fighting on the Russian and later on the Central
Central European battle-fronts by delivering manpower, military supply fuel and
food from Siberia. A part of the United States’ military aid provided by train for
the Red Army was also transported from Vladivostok through the Transsib line.
During the summer of 1945 the direction of this military supply flow reversed as
military supply with 22 divisions were sent from the European part of Russia
eastwards to the Manchurian battle-fronts for supporting Soviet terrestrial troops
in their war against the Japanese. At the time of the Soviet–Chinese conflicts to
avoid the threats arising from the proximity of Chinese border and to exploit the
available mineral resources of Siberia the Baikal–Amur Railway was built in the
1970s in Eastern-Siberia several hundred kilometres north from the Transsib fol-
lowing a parallel route with it (Priwalow–Paschkowa, 2001).
Thanks to continuous improvements since the 1930s Transsib is now a double-
tracked line. By 2003 it had been electrified in its full length and modernised: it is
now equipped by a modern telecommunication system, an automated security
braking system and by year 2012 the railway line in its full length will be suitable
for servicing passenger trains running at a speed of maximum 160 kilometres per
hour and fast freight and container freight trains running at a speed of maximum
120 kilometres per hour. These parameters will comply with the compulsory
standards of the main European international railway lines. From the aspects of
improving the Siberian railways’ technical/traffic performance it seems promising
that the reconstruction of loading stations is progressing well and their equipment
can accommodate and serve even the biggest (40 feet) containers used in interna-
tional marine trade.
Transsib has direct (foreign) connection with the Finnish in north-west, with
the Baltic in west, with the Belorussian and Ukrainian (through them with West-
European) in south-west and with Kazakh (through it with the Central Asian)
railways. In the eastern part the Transsib line ends up in the Pacific coast ports of
Russia (by using ferry services Sakhalin Island can be accessed by train as well)
but through some railway sidelines heading to south-east even Mongolia, China
and Korea can be accessed by rail (Figure 7). Transsib has no alternative means
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of transport in the east-west long-distance railway transport of Russia as several
sections of the highways running along the Transsib line are unsuitable for
servicing heavy weight freight truck traffic (Transsib-Straße... 2004).
Figure 7
The Transsib with other Trans-Eurasian corridors and the North–South corridor
Legend: 1 – The Trans-Siberian railway (with Chinese and European sidelines); 2 – The Ost-West
Corridor 3 – The New Silk Route (TRACECA), 4 – The Trans-Eurasian potential corridor,
5 – The southern Trans-Eurasian corridor (having low chances of realization); 6 – North–South
corridor.
Sopurce: Edited by the author by using several documents.
During the Soviet era the late 1940s was the first period when the interna-
tional civil traffic increased on the Transsib. This was the time when several mil-
lion tons of cars and technical equipment was exported to the People’s Republic
of China and North-Korea within the frame of a giant international aid pro-
gramme for the modernisation of their industries and armies. However the volume
of this bilateral exchange of goods dropped down to a marginal value when the
relationship between the two rivalling communist empires turned strained.
Hired transit train haulage services for foreign companies were introduced
first at the late 1960s in Russia. At the initial phase (1967) railway container
transport services were limited to the routes of Japan–Finland and Japan–Swit-
zerland only but later on the Siberian transit services of the Russian railways of-
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fering in some cases even 20% cheaper transit fees than of other international
shipping companies were used by an increasing number of western transport op-
erators. For increasing hard currency revenues the Soviet government increased
its container shipping capacity to several hundred thousand TEU per year until the
end of the 1980s (the real value of the annual shipping traffic was 150–160 thou-
sand TEU) and in the recent years international passenger traffic (as a part of a
mixed travel mode to Japan) was introduced in Transsib.
Despite of the cheap air services of that time Transsib had very important role
in long-distance passenger traffic even in the Soviet era. Some parts of the Trans-
sib line allowed running express trains at a speed of 120–140 kilometres per hour
(Dampf und Reise, 1992. 1. p. 39–45.).
After the collapse of the Soviet Union the economic crisis, the increasing of
rail transport charges (getting them closer to input prices), the complicated cus-
toms procedures, the worsening of transport security and the decreasing tariffs of
marine transport resulted in a heavy drop of international transit traffic as well
(in 1993/1994 the Transsib’s total volume of container shipping traffic was no
more than 25–35 thousand TEU and of all these the volume of international traffic
was 15–25 thousand TEU – Kulke-Fiedler, 2005). Although the Russian govern-
ment recognized in due time the losses arising directly and indirectly (due to the
country’s negative international image) from the fall of traffic volume indicators
to the lowest level and was doing its best to increase the attractive force of transit
services but due to the inconsistence of its measurements traffic volume was only
very slowly increasing. It was only in the early years of our century which
brought a real breakthrough by significantly increasing the quality of services, by
the introduction of a tariff policy taking competitors into account, by simplifying
administrative procedures and by introducing an armed security service for con-
tainer trains (Pechterew–Scharapow, 2001).
By the present time the volume of the container traffic of the Transsib (345
thousand TEU) has significantly exceeded the maximum registered in year 1988
but only a half of this figure concerns international traffic. The total volume of
traffic is still below the line’s nominal capacity which is estimated by different
sources to 0.5–1 million TEU. From this one could draw the formal conclusion
that the Transsib has large excessive capacities but this is denied by experts say-
ing that congestions in traffic urge for increasing the capacity of railway tracks.
We cannot give a definite answer to the question whether this problem is origi-
nating from traffic control failures, from the deterrent effects of customs and ad-
ministrative bureaucracy or from the inadequate condition of infrastructure.
Railway operators are trying to shorten the duration of their service by accel-
erated (‘fast’) trains but they can cover a distance of 1100–1300 kilometres daily
as a rule. By using a normal train service the average time of delivering container
cargos from the nearby ports of Vladivostok to Finland is 21 days and to Swit-
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zerland is 32 days. The duration of the newly set up rapid delivery services is 12
days to Finland, 12.5 days to Poland and 13–14 days to Hungary (Rodig, 2007).
In the early years of our century the Korean Republic was the biggest interna-
tional container freight transporter on the Transsib line (Walter, 2007). The
starting of regular railway service between South and North Korea in 2007 (Nord
Korea... 2007) the reconstruction of the railway line along the Russian-North-
Korean border (between Radzin and Hassan) will increase the number of South-
Korean containers to such an extent that for some years South-Korea will surely
preserve its first place before China regarding the volume of international con-
tainer cargo traffic by the Transsib. South-Korea uses the Transsib for delivering
car spare parts/semi-finished products to European and Central-Asian car manu-
facturers (Kulke-Fiedler, 2006). Japan’s share from the Transsib cargo transport
significantly decreased from the turn of the 1980/1990s as the modern container
ships departing from Japans with strict punctuality offer more favourable terms of
delivery. For this reasons it is goods to be delivered to Russian destinations (such
as car spare parts to be sent to the St. Petersburg branch of Toyota Manufacturing
Company or special equipment for Russian industry) that are preferably for-
warded by Transsib (Sjögren, 2007).
In 2006 87% of the Transsib’s international transit traffic of containers was
generated by South-Korean and Chinese companies. About one-third of the Chi-
nese goods crossing the Russian border (15 million tons) remains in Russia and
two-thirds are forwarded to the eastern, central, northern or western parts of
Europe. Four-fifths of the goods coming from Korea and China enter Russia
through the Chinese-Russian railway border stations and the ports of Na-
hodka/Vostochny/Vladivostok and one-fifth arrive from China through Mongolia.
The exit point of trains on the western part of Russia is Buslovskaya on the Rus-
sian-Finnish border and Brest in the proximity of the Belorussian–Polish border
(Transsib erhält... 2004).
Finland in the geographical periphery of the Euro-Asian region now is starting
to function as a Europe-oriented international distributional centre of East-Asian
manufactured products – having recognised that this business is yielding high
profits and revenues for the country.
Only a low percentage of goods forwarded to the Black Sea, to the Mediterra-
nean Sea, to Iran and the Persian Gulf are involved in the container transit traffic
of the Transsib (www.dvtg.ru).
A growing number of Chinese border stations involved in container transit
traffic is reconstructed now: the sizing of capacities is closely following the in-
creasing demands forecasted for a period of 15–20 years.
Today the volume of the Trans-Siberian passenger traffic is cca. 40% of that
one in 1989 as the number of passengers wearing uniform or working on Siberian
investment projects is by far less than before and the price of train tickets in com-
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parison with local salaries have increased to an unaffordable level for many peo-
ple.
The social composition of passengers has changed as the ratio of foreigners
has increased. Besides a group of wealthy sightseeing West-European, American
and Japanese tourists preferring to travel comfortably the majority of Transsib
passengers are Chinese and Mongolian small retail traders/pedlars using cheap
and low level travel services only (Komarov, 2002).
4.1.2 The ‘New Silk Route” Trans-Asian Corridor as a weak potential alternative
of Transsib
After the collapse of the Soviet Union Central-Asian countries outlying of the
major seas for relieving their handicapped remote geographic location initiated
that high capacity international corridors should be built for them connecting their
highways and railway lines with the major centres and seaports of world econ-
omy. As a first step of this project the Kazakh railways were connected to the
Chinese railways in 1991. The alternatives of Transsib may be the railway lines
running southward from the Transsib connecting China with West-Europe (Stau...
2007) (Figure 7). Delivering the vast amount of Chinese export goods by rail is
an enormous task needing the simultaneous use of several transport corridors such
as
the traditional Transsib railway;
the auxiliary north-western bimodal (railway/sea) semi-global corridor con-
necting Siberia with the eastern coast of the United States (Boston and Hali-
fax) through Narvik. This requires maintaining fair political relations with
Russia.
Any Trans-Eurasian railway lines bypassing Russia will force the Russian
railways for the further modernisation of (building a third track for increas-
ing the capacity) of their transit lines and for reducing their service fees.
China, Kazakhstan, Central-Asia and Middle-East are all hoping that the new
railway lines connecting the ports of the Yellow Sea with Europe will improve
their economic positions (Erdősi, 1999). One line of the two alternatives would
connect them with Europe through Iran, Turkey (passing through a tunnel under
the Bosporus) and end up in Hamburg (Figure 8) (Zholy, 2004). But this is an
unofficial plan. The other is the so-called ‘New Silk Route‘ (Figure 9) which has
been formulated on the basis of the common declaration of the directly and indi-
rectly affected countries (1998 Baku Declaration) and it has been supported by
the United Nations’ Economic Commission and by the European Union by its
TRACECA (Transport Corridor Europe Caucasus Asia) multi-modal (rail-
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Figure 8
The Trans‐Eurasian semi‐global multi‐modal transportation route as proposed by Zholy
Source: Zholy, 2004.
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Figure 9
The New Silk Route (TRACECA) project, the alternatives
of China – Central-Asia – East-Europe route
Source: Ezugbaia, 2007.
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way/road/sea) transport corridor development programme (Both–Hausmann
2003). With this West-Europe is trying to plug in the southern post-soviet coun-
tries into its economic sphere of interest. This corridor would start from Turk-
menistan and would pass through the Caspian Sea and the countries of Caucasus
then by crossing the Black Sea would reach the Eastern Balkan. The building of
this railway chain could lighten or even eliminate the heavy dependence from the
Russian railways. Breaking up the monopoly of the Trans-Siberian railways by
providing alternative routes could improve the logistic conditions of exporting
Chinese/Central-Asian goods to Europe and the Atlantic coast of the United
States.
In comparison to railways building the roads of the ‘New Silk Route’ would
be much cheaper therefore more results may be expected in this field in the ma-
jority of affected countries. For example in 2008 Kazakhstan started to build a
2390 kilometre transnational highway connecting China with the Caspian Sea and
Uzbekistan will have built its more than 2000 kilometre motorway on the route of
Andizan–Taschkent–Nukus–Kungrad by year 2010 (Erste Autobahn... 2007).
The building of the logistic infrastructure of an east-west corridor crossing
Central-Asia was funded by the EU’s TRACECA fund with 100 million euro and
an additional sum of 700 million euro was added to this by international financial
institutions for the subsidization of 53 sub-projects.
The two biggest successor states of the Soviet Union (Russia and Ukraine)
have different but very important interests tied up with the New Silk Route. De-
veloping an alternative route and operating another railway line competing
against the Transsib is to some extent working against the interests of Russia
(Russland steht... 2000). According to the opinions of the Russians the New Silk
Route serves West-European interests by enabling their penetration into the
Asian/Caucasian markets and oust Russia from them (for this reason Russia was
represented by an observer only in the community of TRACECA members –
Eigene Beteiligung... 2000).
4.1.3 The Arctic Ocean (Peri-Asian) route
Russia’s and the Soviet Union’s military leaders have been keeping a close eye on
the navigational issues of the North-Eastern Passage since the bad logistic experi-
ences they suffered in the 1905 Russian–Japanese War.
Since the 1960s/70s the programme of conquering arctic waters comprised a
plan of a navigational route through the Arctic Pole to the Pacific Ocean (Mur-
mansk–Bering Strait) along the sea coast and of another plan of Trans-Arctic
navigational route shortening the same way by 1300 kilometres by navigating on
the open seas leaving the coastal zone. This would have not only shortened the
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travel time of commercial boats (and saved costs) but the presence of Soviet
military troops on the Arctic waters or even pushing out the American navy forces
also would have improved the strategic military position of the Soviet Union
against the United States. The navigational route crossing the North Pole (Figure
10) has a clear advantage – compared to coastal navigation – as deep waters al-
low the traffic of very big (more than 200dwt) ships (Armstrong, 1987).
As the Soviet-American diplomatic relations went back to normal the issues of
the Trans-Arctic navigation route were struck off from the agenda and less atten-
tion was paid for the coastal navigation route heading eastward from the estuary
of river Yenisei (and river Lena), the most unsuitable for navigation used only for
transit purposes (Figure 11). Much more considerable efforts were made for im-
proving the navigational security of the western part of the Arctic Ocean for re-
ducing the dependency of navigability from ice conditions so as to facilitate ship-
ping between the European part of the country and Siberia (Armstrong, 1987).
During the 1980s the Arctic Ocean fleet was expanded by special (mostly nu-
clear engine ice-breaking or heavy structured, strong ‘ice resistant’) ships.
At the beginning of the 21st century the dependency of the Russian economy on
the revenues of Siberian exportable resources is higher than ever before. Al-
though the majority of crude oil and natural gas is delivered by pipelines to
Europe still a great amount of them is shipped by tankers as well. Shipping goods
by the sea has an outstanding role in transporting heavy technical equipment
needed for oil, coal and metal mining and also in delivering building materials,
food and manufactured articles.
The maintenance of the Northern Navigation Corridor has high priority in the
regional development plans of Northern Russia. Today, thanks to high perform-
ance ice breaker ships the all the year round navigation in the western parts of the
Arctic Ocean is technically possible up to the estuary of river Ob or in better sea-
sons even up to river Yenisei. In the colder eastern parts of the Arctic Ocean the
extension of the navigational season to 8–9 months is also possible. However on
the Arctic Sea east of the estuary of river Lena the Northern Navigation Corridor
is not used as a transit shipping route on a regular basis. It is rather used for do-
mestic shipping purposes but it also has role in foreign trade by shipping oil and
timber in the majority of cases.
It is not known how global warming will affect navigation and how the north-
ern regions of Russia will be capable to benefit from this situation. The Arctic
Ocean (navigable all the year round) navigation route may turn a better alternative
for West-European transport operators for accessing the western coasts of
Eastern-Asia and even North-America (Figure 10). The traffic of the Arctic
Ocean would surely significantly increase if it was navigable all the year round
without the assistance of ice breaker ships.
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Figure 10
The position of the Arctic Ocean’s navigation route against the alternative routes
bypassing Asia from the South and crossing through the Panama Canal
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Figure 11
The major ports of the coastal navigation routes of the Arctic Ocean and their
connections with Siberian navigable rivers
Source: Armstrong, 1987.
In theory the Arctic Ocean’s navigation route might be a competitor of Trans-
sib in the transit traffic of Eurasia.
Russia may gain higher benefits from the new situation both in case of domes-
tic (interregional) goods exchange and in case of international trade with Eastern
Asia/Pacific and of the West Europe-Pacific transit traffic not mentioning those
resulting from shortening travel distance. For example the distance between
Hamburg and Singapore is 8377 nautical miles through the Suez Canal. The dis-
tance between the same cities through the Arctic Ocean and the Strait of Bering is
9730 nautical miles but no canal fees are charged therefore the conditions are
more or less the same on the two navigation routes. Moreover, the distance of
East-Asian economic centres (Japan, China, South-Korea and Taiwan) from the
West-European mega-ports is shorter by 13–18% through the North-eastern Pas-
sage than through Suez not mentioning the savings incurring from eliminating the
payment of canal fees (Zachdel, 2007).
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4.1.4 The potential consequences of the extension of Panama Canal for the land
bridge role of Russia and on the traffic of the Arctic Sea
One of the major global sea trade routes is crossing the Panama Canal. For all that
the traffic of this Central-American waterway (212 million tons in 2006) is far
below of the Suez Canal (1040 million tons in 2006) as due to its narrowness it
can accommodate bulk freight or tanker ships of 40–45 thousand dwt maximum
capacity or container ships of 4000 TEU maximum capacity only. For increasing
the economic efficiency of inter-continental transportation the size of container
ships is continuously increasing but they cannot do anything else than taking the
much longer route through the Suez Canal. This is the case for example between
the ports of the US eastern coast and Eastern Asia. For some of them the north-
eastern pass on the Arctic Ocean can be an alternative as a potential navigational
route. The expansion of Panama Canal is expected to be finished by 2012(?) and
from that time the Canal can accommodate three times bigger than now container
ships with a capacity of 12,000 TEU. This will decrease the prevalence of Suez
Canal in marine transport between the three economic power centres of the world
and several shippers will ‘change their minds’ by selecting the Panama Canal
route (between Canada/the eastern coast of the USA or even West-Europe and
Eastern/South-eastern Asia). At the same time the North-western Passage starting
from the coasts of Canada and Alaska may provide a competitive alternative route
(The Hamburg–Vancouver route is 8741 kilometres through Panama and 6635
kilometres through the North-eastern Passage). Regarding both the travel distance
– especially on the route of Southwest-Europe/Canada – Japan-eastern coast/
South-Korea/North-eastern-China bypassing North-America from the north seems
to be economical by saving the costs of Panama-Canal fees (it is now 54
USD/TEU but it is planned to be increased to 74 USD/TEU by year 2009 and in
2014 another price increase can be expected). Thus, it can be assumed that the
redirection and changes in the traffic and importance of east-west commercial
maritime navigation routes may slow down or even halt the now increasing inter-
national transit traffic of Russia’s northern navigation route. It may occur theo-
retically that the navigation of the arctic seas will be restricted by environ-
mental/nature conservational considerations (bearing in mind the eco-system’s
high sensitivity to changes) – as it has been pointed out by Zachdel (2007) but
practically this aspect plays no significant role in the decisions of the affected
countries. Comparative costs and the ever changing macro-/global economic pol-
icy are much more influential factors of the performance and percentage indica-
tors of inter-continental and intra-Eurasian scaled shipping traffic.
There might also be such a scenario that serious political conflicts, local fights
or terrorism make conventional navigation routes temporarily inaccessible. In
such a vis maior case inter-continental navigation routes could be relocated to
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arctic routes which would spectacularly increase the importance of Russian sea
routes for a certain time.
4.2 The North-South Corridor and the Caspian Sea
Among the foreign political aspirations of Russia, the access to the Persian Gulf
has always had a high priority, as has the presence in the Middle East, a tradi-
tional British influence zone. This effort is manifested in the dominant role of the
Russian government in the planning and the implementation of the North–South
Corridor, connecting Finland through Russia and Iran to the Gulf and the Indian
sub-continent (Figure 7). The Russian proposal was approved of at the 2nd Inter-
national Eurasian Transport Conference in 2000, and the international agreement
was signed (supported by both Iran and India), followed by the signing of several
interested countries at the 3rd Conference, or by countries expecting an indirect
benefit from the realisation of the project (from Bulgaria, Belarus and Tajikistan
to Azerbaijan, Syria and Oman). Some countries made a declaration of contribu-
tion, some far-away countries (Latvia, Malaysia, Thailand and South Korea) are
evaluating the possibility of their participation (Slobodyanyuk, 2004).
The North-South Corridor connecting Europe (mostly the economic ‘core’
zone of North-West Europe) with Asia with its adjoining corridor from west
(through Belorussia and Ukraine) can be a competitor of the Suez Canal in the
container transportation of valuable goods. The shipping costs of a 40[feet] con-
tainer from Frankfurt (Germany) to Iran are 5670 USD while on the new North-
South Corridor – by eliminating channel fees – would cost 3600 USD only –
Kooperation... 2004).
On the Russian section of the North-South corridor a multimodal transporta-
tion of goods by river/rail, in Iran goods would be forwarded by rail and between
Bandar Abbuz (Strait of Hormuz) and India by sea. In the wide area of the Cas-
pian Sea several schemes of cargo transport have been elaborated. One alternative
is a railway line following the western coast of the Caspian Sea which through a
sideline of 340 kilometres having been built in 2008 departing from Astara in
Azerbaijan passing through Rashton in Northern-Iran and arriving in the city of
Quarvin would link the Russian railways with the Iranian one and through this
line a rail connection would be granted to the Gulf of Oman. The other alternative
– by using the Caspian waterway would connect the Russian ports of the north-
western coast with the ports of Northern-Iran (Enseli, Bandar-e-Anzali) (Con-
tainer international 27 August 2005).
In Turkmenia the Uzen-Gizilgaya-Bereket-Etrek-Gargan railways which now
is under construction will also be a part of this corridor and from 2011 it will
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shorten the railway route distance from Russia and Kazakhstan to Iran by 600
kilometres (DVZ, 12 December 2007).
The Russians are planning to build the North-South Corridor so that it would
serve for their own interests in such a way that the cargo transfer node would
operate on their country’s territory instead of Azerbaijan. In that spirit the Russian
government’s programme titled ‘The Modernisation of Transport Complex by
Year 2010’ is focusing on the port of Olya on the north-western coast of the Cas-
pian so that it would serve as a cargo transfer port for goods targeted at Iran
(Radloff, 2005). The loading capacity of bulk and liquid cargo transfer terminal
built next to the container terminal of Olya, which is gradually increasing its ca-
pacity to 400 thousand TEU is planned to be increased to 4 million TEU by 2005
and to 10 million by 2010. The completion of the railway sideline adjoining to the
main railway route in 2006 is significantly contributing to the feasibility of this
plan (Containerterminal... 2006).
4.3 Trans-Eurasian terrestrial or Peri-Asian sea route? Passing through
or bypassing Russia? (The perspectives of the freight transport route
competition between Europe and Eastern Asia)
This paper has shortly presented the transportation routes connecting the two
power centres of global economy and embodying different values and capacities
for global trade. From the point of the economic development of the whole bi-
continent (Eurasia) and North-Africa it is a key issue what kind of relationship
will be shaped out between these route alternatives i.e.
will there be a tough rivalry between them for winning at the expense of the
competitor? Will any of these routes enjoy a hegemony being capable of
functioning as an alternative against the others
or in the spirit of co-operation transportation will be regarded as a coordi-
nated division of tasks by taking the different features of routes into ac-
count? In this latter case some routes (by still preserving their indispensa-
bility) will function as auxiliary having no dominance over the others.
Theoretically both extremes may come true but it only for a while. It is much
more likely that a mixture of the above two scenarios will be realized as an out-
come of the following influencing factors:
transitions and changes in the influential power and functions of the power
centres of global economy;
the restructuring of the export and import allocations of (and between) the
countries of Eurasia;
43
Erdősi, Ferenc : Global and Regional Roles of the Russian Transport Infrastructures.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2008. 51. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 69.
the political relations between the regions/countries of transit transport and
the degree of their readiness for compromise;
the outcomes of the potential rivalry of superpowers (Russia and china or
other countries) on international (transit) transport (a potential administra-
tive discrimination against one party and preference for the other party);
the development of transport technology and
last but not least changes in the global climate.
These cardinal factors some times have simultaneous impacts by strengthening
each other’s forces alike but in the majority of cases the given situation comprises
a few of these elements only.
The evaluation of commercial transportation routes should be based on trans-
portation capacities which should be regarded as a technical parameter). During
the past few years 98.3% of the total goods flowing between East-Asia and
Europe were shipped by the sea. Apart from ships passing round South-Africa and
those servicing on northern sea routes including the North-eastern Passage the
greater majority of cargo shipments are following the Indian Ocean – Suez Canal
– peri-Asian route (Figure 12). The ratio of air cargo transportation is 0.10–0.17%
and of rail cargo delivery is 1.3–1.4%. Of all the rail cargo transportations the
service coverage rate of Transsib (together with Manchurian and Mongolian rail-
ways as they are integrated into one) is 92%. The 2.0–2.3% penetration rate of
railway from total container traffic is slightly higher than of the percentage of
total rail cargo delivery. The breakdown of this latter figure is as follows: Trans-
sib’s percentage is 1.8–2.0% and the remaining ratio of cargo is hauled by the
(non inter-operable) railway service between China and Kazakhstan/Central-Asia
having no extension towards Europe yet (on the New Silk Route Corridor).
Regarding both the development trends of transportation technologies and the
changes in the structure/assortment of goods no significant changes can be ex-
pected in the breakdown of cargo shipping capacities between sea and terrestrial
routes. Recent trends show that the growth rate of sea cargo shipping (namely
container shipping) on the southern peri-Asian route – as a partial consequence of
giant port buildings in China/Southeast-Asia of marine fleet developments and of
the expansion the Suez Canal is higher than of the Trans-Eurasian railways.
India with its steady economic growth has a significant on cargo traffic growth
in the sea routes between Europe and South-Asia.
The development of transport technology will hardly change significantly this
situation. Theoretically a high performance and high speed train service (e.g.
MAGLEV – magnetic levitation) might be built in the internal part of Eurasia to
forward valuable/express delivery goods losing their value within a short period
of time in 1–3 days to the destination country lying at a distance of 5–13 thousand
kilometres (It might occur that a macro-region is in need of purchasing fresh food
44
Erdősi, Ferenc : Global and Regional Roles of the Russian Transport Infrastructures.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2008. 51. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 69.
Figure 12
The major routes of China’s Sea trade transport
Source: Edited by the author.
45
Erdősi, Ferenc : Global and Regional Roles of the Russian Transport Infrastructures.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2008. 51. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 69.
products – green grocery/fruits, dairy products, meat etc. – on daily basis from a
remote country. But turning back now to the reality of the present: the technical
modernisation of rail infrastructure serving as a basis for the Transsib’s capacities
has been finished by now so a further modernisation of the traffic control system
would increase the intensity of traffic maximum by 15–20% only. A positive
breakthrough in increasing cargo delivery capacities could be achieved only by
building a third track but because of the very high costs this alternative has been
excluded even from long-term delivery capacities could be achieved only by
building a third track but because of the very high costs this alternative has been
excluded even from long-term development plans. An urgent improvement of the
existing capacities by 50–70% would certainly be taken into consideration in case
of a rapid growth in cargo transportation demands. But now it seems that China
for the reasons of satisfying its transportation demands – originating partially
from its needs for securing the necessary capacities and partially from politi-
cal/national security considerations – intends to diversify its transportation routes
and use them actively. For this reason there are no signs that China would avoid
using the cargo transport services of Transsib in its foreign trade. On the contrary,
China is an active member of the business organisation integrating the railway
line crossing Russia in east-west direction into a bi-modal (railway and sea) corri-
dor connecting China with the eastern coast of the United States (Boston and
Halifax) through Narvik (Figure 7).
However it is also a fact that China is highly interested in building a Trans-
Eurasian corridor through Central-Asia as well – together with the countries
involved. But this corridor heading towards Western and Eastern-Europe can
compete with other routes only in case it runs at full of its length on terrestrial
routes (eliminating in this way the loading and unloading of goods in the ports of
the Caspian and Black Sea) and its railway track is inter-operable regarding at
least the compliance of railway gauges between the Russian and Chinese rail-
ways. Today the chances of meeting these criteria seem to be weak and only some
partial issues can be expected to be solved within a reasonable future period. Al-
though Kazakhstan will invest heavy sums into building a normal gauge railway
line between the border of China and the Caspian Sea but the inter-operability of
this line will be terminated at the latter destination. This problem can be tackled
only by building it further by bypassing the Caspian Sea from the northern side on
Russian territories and by extending the route through Ukraine heading towards
the countries of East-Central-Europe and towards Romania. Ukraine has big plans
for participating in this project so as to extend its RoLa services and to increase
the importance of port Odessa (Kulke-Fiedler, 2006c).
It can almost be taken granted that the competitiveness of sea navigation
routes can be improved only by increasing the capacity of transportation routes
and ships and increasing the speed of transport is out of question. Increasing the
46
Erdősi, Ferenc : Global and Regional Roles of the Russian Transport Infrastructures.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2008. 51. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 69.
speed of commercial marine boats would incur an exponential growth of energy
and fuel consumption, would put navigation/steering on a new basis but at the
same time the speed of goods transport could not be increased significantly both
on Suez and Panama Canals and neither in the extremely heavily loaded and busy
natural straits (e.g. Malakka Strait). Although crossing on a channel through the
Malaysian Peninsula would save some hundred miles (Figure 13) ( Rappik, 2006)
but this advantage by far could be superseded by the benefits of the all the year
round availability of the Arctic Ocean coast for navigation.
Figure 13
The longer route to be shortened by the Kra Channel crossing
the Malakka Strait
Legend: 1 – Malakka Strait; 2 – Kra Channel.
Source: Rappik, 2006.
47
Erdősi, Ferenc : Global and Regional Roles of the Russian Transport Infrastructures.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2008. 51. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 69.
The continuing global warming provides fairly good chances for that. This route
would significantly shorten the distance for shippers navigating between
Northern-Europe and Japan or North-east-China. We estimate that even 10–20%
of the traffic of the Peri-Asian southern sea traffic could be redirected to this new
today and very seldom used sea navigation route (Zachdel, 2007). As this route
would pass through Russian territories mostly, Russia’s importance would further
increase in (terrestrial/sea/air) international transit traffic and this could even raise
another source of conflicts. However we are rather on the opinion that this
situation would rather create a peaceful co-existence between the countries of
Central and East-Asia and would further increase the openness of Russia on the
basis of the recognition of mutual interests.
5 An Overview
The topic of this paper deals with one of the most exciting issues of our future,
namely what role Russia can play in world economy and to what extent the coun-
tries of Europe and partly of (East) Asia may economically depend of Russia. The
dependency from this bi-continental empire can the most obviously and in some
cases the most abruptly be manifested by the crude oil and natural gas supply of
East-European (and some West-European) countries but the dependency of the
economy of China and India from the Russian resources is also getting higher and
higher.
One of the hardly exaggerated transport geographical conditions of the two-
continent size (bi-continental) empire is that it is located between the two super-
powers of world economy namely (Western) Europe and East-Asia. The question
here is how this geographical position can be exploited in the inter-continental
exchange of goods. The Arctic Ocean as a navigational route can have a practical
importance only in case when climate change will reduce the necessity of using
ice breaker ships for the mid-winter period only. The Trans-Siberian railway line
is electrified in its full length.
The container transport capacity of the Trans-Siberian railways, double
tracked and electrified in full length, was 600–700 thousand TEU in year 2008
and even if it was extended by an additional third track it would not exceed the
annual figure of 1 million TEU. And this is only a small portion of the total goods
shipped by sea (through the Suez Canal). But nowadays the rising level of piracy
(at the Straits of Malakka and Hormuz) is such a threat for ocean liners which
may increase the importance of the Trans-Siberian line and the Trans-Asian ter-
restrial transport corridors (connecting China with Europe through Central-Asia
and the Caucasus).
48
Erdősi, Ferenc : Global and Regional Roles of the Russian Transport Infrastructures.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2008. 51. p.
Discussion Papers, No. 69.
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BENKŐNÉ LODNER, Dorottya (ed.) (1988): Environmental Control and Policy: Proceedings of
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HAJDÚ, Zoltán (2004): Carpathian Basin and the Development of the Hungarian
Landscape Theory Until 1948
No. 45
GÁL, Zoltán (2004): Spatial Development and the Expanding European Integration of the
Hungarian Banking System
No. 46
BELUSZKY, Pál – GYŐRI, Róbert (2005): The Hungarian Urban Network in the
Beginning of the 20th Century
No. 47
G. FEKETE, Éva (2005): Long-term Unemployment and Its Alleviation in Rural Areas
No. 48
SOMLYÓDYNÉ PFEIL, Edit (2006): Changes in The Organisational Framework of
Cooperation Within Urban Areas in Hungary
No. 49
MEZEI, István (2006): Chances of Hungarian–Slovak Cross-Border Relations
No. 50 RECHNITZER, János – SMAHÓ, Melinda (2006): Regional Characteristics of Human
Resources in Hungary During the Transition
No. 51
BARTA, Györgyi – BELUSZKY, Pál – CZIRFUSZ, Márton – GYŐRI, Róbert –
KUKELY, György (2006): Rehabilitating the Brownfield Zones of Budapest
No. 52
GROSZ, András (2006): Clusterisation Processes in the Hungarian Automotive Industry
No. 53
FEKETE, G. Éva – HARGITAI, Judit – JÁSZ, Krisztina – SZARVÁK, Tibor –
SZOBOSZLAI, Zsolt (2006): Idealistic Vision or Reality? Life-long learning among
Romany ethnic groups
No. 54
BARTA, Györgyi (ed.) (2006): Hungary – the New Border of the European Union
No. 55
GÁL, Zoltán (2006): Banking Functions of the Hungarian Urban Network in the Early
20th Century.
No. 56
SZÖRÉNYINÉ, Kukorelli Irén (2006): Relation Analysis in Rural Space – A Research
Method for Exploring the Spatial Structure in Hungary
No. 57
MAUREL, Marie-Claude – PÓLA, Péter (2007): Local System and Spatial Change – The
Case of Bóly in South Transdanubia
No. 58
SZIRMAI, Viktória (2007): The Social Characteristics of Hungarian Historic City Centres
No. 59
ERDŐSI, Ferenc – GÁL, Zoltán – GIPP, Christoph – VARJÚ, Viktor (2007): Path
Dependency or Route Flexibility in Demand Responsive Transport? The Case Study of
TWIST project
No. 60
PÓLA, Péter (2007): The Economic Chambers and the Enforcement of Local Economic
Interests
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Discussion Papers 2008. No. 69.
Global and Regional Roles of the Russian Transport Infrastructures
No. 61
BUDAY-SÁNTHA, Attila (2007): Development Issues of the Balaton Region
No. 62
LUX, Gábor (2008): Industrial Development, Public Policy and Spatial Differentiation in
Central Europe: Continuities and Change
No. 63
MEZEI, Cecília (2008): The Role of Hungarian Local Governments in Local Economic
Development
No. 64
NAGY, Gábor (2008): The State of the Info-communication Markets in Dél-Alföld
Region – Hungary
No. 65
HORVÁTH, Gyula (2008): Regional Transformation in Russia
No. 66
BELUSZKY, Pál – SIKOS T., Tamás (2008): Changing Village-Typology of Rural
Settlements in Hungary at the Beginning of the Third Millennium
No. 67
CSIZMADIA, Zoltán – GROSZ, András (2008): Regional Innovation System in West
Transdanubia
No. 68
HARDI, Tamás (ed.) (2008): Transborder Movements and Relations in the Slovakian–
Hungarian Border Regions
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