At RailFreight.com, we often write about the Eurasian transport corridors. These are important pieces of infrastructure for international trade flows. It may not always be clear where these corridors are located exactly, how they compare and why they are important. With this explainer, we aim to give you an overview of the main routes.
1. What are the Eurasian transport corridors?
There are three particularly important corridors on the Eurasian continent. The Northern Corridor, the Middle Corridor and the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC).
The Northern Corridor connects Europe and Asia, particularly China, via the Russian railway network. By far the largest share of the corridor runs through Russia along the Trans-Siberian railway. On this corridor, trains can also transit through Mongolia before entering Russia from China. Depending on who you are asking, Kazakhstan may also be included in this corridor when trains are transiting into Russia and further into Europe. The Eurasian Development Bank calls this the Central Eurasian Corridor (see map below).
The Middle Corridor also connects China and Europe, but is located more to the south. It runs through Kazakhstan, but then crosses the Caspian Sea into the Caucasus. It traverses the Caucasian mountains in Azerbaijan and Georgia, from where it sails across the Black Sea into Romania and Bulgaria. Alternatively, trains can transit Turkey on their way to Europe.
An even more southern alternative in Central Asia also exists, running through Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan before crossing the Caspian. However, this route is more geographically and politically complicated and is less important than the main route through Kazakhstan.
Lastly, the INSTC connects Russia’s arctic city of Murmansk with Iran’s southern Indian Ocean coast. It has an eastern and western variant, which respectively run along the eastern and western coast of the Caspian Sea. Like the Middle Corridor, freight along the INSTC is transported across the Caspian Sea as well.
2. How do these corridors compare in length, capacity and transit time?
By far the longest corridor is the Northern Corridor. It has a length of approximately 10,000 kilometres. By comparison, the Middle Corridor and INSTC are 7,000 and 7,200 kilometres in length respectively.
However, the lengths of the corridors do not reflect transit times. While longest in distance, the Northern Corridor boasts the shortest transit times at a 14-day average. The Middle Corridor has transit times between 13 and 21 days, but is less reliable. Delays can grow transit times up to 60 days in the worst case scenario. According to Al Jazeera, the INSTC has a transit time of 25 to 30 days.
In terms of capacity, the Northern Corridor also takes the crown. The Atlantic Council reports that the corridor has an annual capacity of over 100 million tonnes. The INSTC follows at 15 million tonnes, and the Middle Corridor takes third place with 6 million tonnes. It is important to note that infrastructure works to expand capacity are ongoing at all three corridors. Russia voiced its desire to expand INSTC capacity to at least 35 million tonnes annually, for example.
3. What are the main difficulties and opportunities of these corridors?
The Northern Corridor has got a lot going for itself. It can count itself lucky with a lot of developed infrastructure. Moreover, the section through Russia is long and uninterrupted, which speeds up transit times significantly. Perhaps unsurprisingly, volumes along the route have been growing again. This follows a downturn after the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when many companies decided to avoid doing business with Russia.
As for the Middle Corridor, it is quite the opposite. It traverses many countries, which slows down transportation and raises administrative costs. It crosses mountains, and even the inland Caspian Sea, which prevents the corridor from being rail-only and makes it more expensive. By all accounts, the route is more complicated and costly than the Northern Corridor.
The INSTC also runs through many countries, but via two different branches. Moreover, it is an expensive project. The main obstacle currently is the construction of the Rasht – Astara railway, which would secure an uninterrupted railway from Russia to Iran’s southern coast once completed. However, it is a project that costs over a billion dollars.
4. Why are people interested in the development of these corridors?
This is different for each corridor. At the moment, on the China – Europe route, shippers seem to be returning to the Northern Corridor for its speed and low costs. According to Russian Railways (RZD), the Russian invasion of Ukraine temporarily shrank volumes by 35 per cent (and likely more than that), but time and the fragile situation in the Red Sea caused its popularity to grow again. RZD says that it expects 2024 to deliver a growth of up to 40 per cent compared to 2023. For Russia, the corridor is a way to generate income. For European customers and Chinese exporters, the Northern Corridor is a way to quickly and cheaply transport goods.
The Middle Corridor is gaining some traction as an alternative to the Northern Corridor. For geopolitical reasons, the EU wants an alternative to transit through Russia. It has invested no less than 10 billion euros in the development of the corridor. As many goods cannot be transported through Russia due to active sanctions, the Middle Corridor is also a necessary overland alternative to the Northern Corridor.
The INSTC is mostly championed by Russia, Iran and India. For Russia, it presents an opportunity to diversify its trade routes in an increasingly tense geopolitical world. It can also use the route to evade Western sanctions by shipping goods through non-Western markets, such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
Iran can profit from the route by becoming an important transit country, solidifying its ties with Russia and India. As for the latter, India is looking for a way to easily get Russian energy resources into its market, The INSTC helps to bypass its rival Pakistan for a more secure supply chain.
5. What is the future of these corridors?
No one can say for sure how they will develop in the future. The future of the Northern Corridor is highly dependent on the development of Russian-Western relations. However, Chinese-Russian trade can at least partially replace the loss of Western trade on the corridor. Russia is planning to spend trillions of rubles on the development of its Far East railway infrastructure in order to facilitate the expected growth in trade turnover with China. These routes should have a throughput capacity of at least 280 million tonnes annually by 2030, according to Russian plans.
Moreover, it looks like the Middle Corridor is picking up the pace. While still complex and expensive, freight volumes on the route have been growing. Trade along the corridor grew fourfold between 2021 and 2023, from approximately half a million tonnes of freight to 2,3 million tonnes. Nevertheless, the future success depends on the corridor’s ability to reduce costs and guarantee reliable services through the many diverse countries that it traverses.
Lastly, the INSTC highly depends on the political willpower of the involved countries to develop it and by how much. A continuation of the changing global trade patterns will induce countries along the INSTC to develop it. As of 2022, the Eurasian Development Bank said that approximately 40 billion dollars worth of investments were either scheduled or ongoing. It stated that up to 12 million tonnes of containerised freight could be transported along the route annually.