Future of cargo transportation lies with Trans-Siberian railway

"We are ready to transport 200-300 thousands of cargo containers via the Trans-Siberian railway," announced Russian First Deputy Railway Minister Vadim Morozov at a press conference in Moscow.

Over four months of this year the volume of container shipping by the Trans-Siberian railway /from the Yaroslavsky railway station in Moscow to Vladivostok in the Maritime territory, with the total length of the route exceeding 9,000 km/ grew by 45 per cent, while over the last year it grew only by 34 per cent or 90,000 containers, he emphasised.

On the whole, 375 million tons of cargo were transported by the Trans-Siberian railway last year, 55 million tons out of which were foreign trade cargoes and 2 million tons were transit cargoes.

Last year the Trans-Siberian railway held a presentation in South Korea devoted to its possibilities to transport cargoes between Europe and the Pacific region, including South Korea, China and Japan, Morozov recalled.

"There they have a huge amount of cargoes that could be shipped by containers, but are still shipped by sea which takes about a month, instead of being delivered in 10-12 days by the cheaper railway right in the heart of Europe," he pointed out.