Container transportation by western route of North-South ITC in IQ’23 surged 5 times — Russian Railways
By 2030, the volume of Russian cargo carried by the corridor is expected to grow to 32 million tonnes
Considerable growth of freight traffic is registered on the western route of the North-South International Transport Corridor (ITC). In the first quarter of 2023, cargo transportation was almost twice as much as in the same period of the previous year, container traffic surged 5 times. The results were announced during the meeting of Oleg Belozerov, Director General - Chairman of Russian Railways BoD, and Rovshan Rustamov, Chairman of Azerbaijan Railways, according to the RZD Telegram channel.
The meeting was focused on reasonability of ensuring the passage of growing volumes through border junctions was discussed, particularly on the need to increase the capacity of the railway checkpoint Samur (Russia) - Yalama (Azerbaijan).
The parties also discussed the work on the reconstruction of the border railway sections on both sides, and the need to synchronize them. In order to correlate the parameters all users of the western route need to coordinate their approaches in terms of the weight and length of trains.
A promising area of cooperation is the introduction of electronic data interchange in the international transportation of goods.
North-South international transport corridor (ITC) is a 7,200-kilometre-long transport artery from St Petersburg to ports in Iran and India. North-South ITC has a western and an eastern branch, both running across Iran. The western one foresees cargo transportation by road via Rasht, the eastern one – by railway. The end point in Iran is the port of Bandar Abbas from which cargo can be delivered to India by sea. The western branch also crosses Azerbaijan, the eastern one – Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Besides, direct water transportation from Russia to Iran by the Caspian Sea is possible.
The volume of Russian cargo transported by the North-South ITC is expected to double by 2030, from the current 17 million tonnes to 32 million tonnes.
According to earlier reports of IAA PortNews, North-South ITC cargo traffic in Q1’23 doubled to 2.3 million tonnes.
