Impacts of Eurasian Transport Connectivity enhancement on Russia

As China has promoted the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) since 2014 and some CIS countries including Russia established Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) in 2015, the trans-Eurasian land transport has gained attentions. Under this background, this paper examines two questions. The first question is how significantly the recent strategic policies such as BRI and EAEU could shift container cargo from maritime shipping and land transport. The other is how much the shift could affect Russian Far East. To answer these questions, the authors estimated their impacts on cargo volume using the intermodal network simulation model. The simulation results indicate that the cargo volume shifted would be about 10 percent of the total container flows between Asia and Europe, under our assumptions. Although the land transport has potential to increase cargo volume several times as the current level, the maritime shipping will be still a dominant mode in the intercontinental cargo transport. In addition, the simulation revealed possible negative impacts on Primorye region of Russia, while the shift will advance.