A new rail freight service for the import of agricultural product was recently established from Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwestern China to the Italian city of Salerno, near Naples. However, various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are saying that some of the cargo coming from the Chinese region may be the…
Category: China
Construction on CKU line to start in October 2024
Construction on the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan (CKU) rail line will start in October 2024, according to Kyrgyz president Sadyr Zhaparov. Negotiations on the line have been long ongoing, and many uncertainties around financing remain. The CKU line is supposed to shorten travel times between China and Europe by 8 days and reduce the distance by 900 kilometres.…
Russia approves 3,7 trillion ruble Far East rail modernisation
Russia has approved further modernisation works of railway infrastructure in its Far Eastern region. On the 50-year anniversary of the so-called Baikal-Amur line (BAM), the country confirmed that it will be spending 3,7 trillion rubles to boost throughput capacity to 270 million tonnes by 2032. The approved investments are part of the third stage of…
The Middle Corridor remains too expensive as an alternative China-Europe route
The Middle Corridor, a multimodal China-Europe freight route through Central Asia, has garnered international interest as a potential alternative to transporting freight through Russia. Illustratively, the EU has allocated 10 billion euros for its development. The corridor remains too expensive to become a route of preference, explains Roland Verbraak, general manager of BTTMultimodalGroup. BTT, a…
Kazakhstan, China and Russia building transport hub near Moscow
Kazakhstan, China and Russia have started building a joint transport hub. The hub will be built at the Selyatino station in Russia’s Moscow region. The hub is supposed to improve transport links between Russia and the Kazakh-Chinese terminal in Xi’an, China. Earlier this year, the Russian firm Slavtrans signed a memorandum of understanding with Kazakh…