OREANDA-NEWS. July 09, 2010. The head of Russian Railways’ Central Transport Control Directorate, Alexei Mironov, spoke at a session on "Combined Transport – Need to Stimulate Efficiency" during the second UIC Global Rail Freight Conference. Mironov said the company has substantially improved the quality of its rail freight transit services, reported the press-centre of Russian Railways.

In particular, the rail network is now able to transport cargo across Russia from the Pacific Ocean to the western borders in 11 days, i.e. at a speed of more than 1,000 km per day. "Customs documentation procedures for freight have been simplified, and a range of other measures have been taken to simplify the procedure for crossing borders. A simplified procedure has been put in place for declaring cargo transported in containers, which has reduced the standing time of containers on the border from 3-5 days to a few hours. The application of modern information technologies enables us to control the movement of carriages and containers in real time", Mr Mironov said.

A large amount of work has been conducted on improving the tariff system. Together with shipping companies, sea ports, and foreign railway companies, competitive transit tariffs from the ports of Japan, South Korea, and China to Europe, the CIS, and the European part of Russia are being developed. Competitive tariff rates have already been set on the Russian rail network for large-tonnage containers travelling on the Trans-Siberian Railway, on routes via Russia’s Far East ports.

When transporting transit goods on the North-South International Transport Corridor, the delivery time compared to sea routes is reduced by between one third and one half, and the cost of transporting one container from Germany or Finland to India is substantially less than by sea. "An important step in the development of intermodal transport on the West-East transport corridor was the decision taken by the heads of the German, Polish, Belarusian and Russian rail networks to create a four-way joint venture, whose main function is to manage projects and optimize the goods transport process on international transport corridor No. 2.", Mironov said.

Russia’s cooperation with Germany and China on developing the China – Russia – Germany trans-continental freight route is currently being actively developed. Mironov said work on introducing progressive combined transport technologies in Russia, in particular of flat wagons carrying trailers or full road trains, needs to be stepped up. He noted that the company has gained specific experience from test runs of flat cars carrying trailers, and that this rolling stock has been developed and tested. Mr Mironov noted in conclusion that Russian Railways is already able to provide combined transport at the highest level of quality and on terms that are economically favourable to cargo owners. To broaden the scale of joint transport business activities, the company is prepared to work with all interested cargo owners.