The Eurasian Land Bridge (), sometimes called the New Silk Road (, ), is the rail transport route for moving freight and passengers overland between Pacific seaports in the Russian Far East and China and seaports in Europe. The route, a transcontinental railroad and rail land bridge, comprises the Trans-Siberian Railway, which runs through Russia and is sometimes called the Northern East-West Corridor, and the New Eurasian Land Bridge or Second Eurasian Continental Bridge, running through China and Kazakhstan. As of November 2007, about one percent of the $600 billion in goods shipped from Asia to Europe each year were delivered by inland transport routes.Berk.
Completed in 1916, the Trans-Siberian connects Moscow with Russian Pacific seaports such as Vladivostok. From the 1960s until the early 1990s the railway served as the primary land bridge between Asia and Europe, until several factors caused the use of the railway for transcontinental freight to dwindle. One factor is use of a wider rail gauge by the railways of the former Russian Empire and Soviet Union than most of the rest of Europe and China.
China's rail system had long linked to the Trans-Siberian via northeastern China and Mongolia. In 1990, China added a link between its rail system and the Trans-Siberian via Kazakhstan. China calls its uninterrupted rail link between the port city of Lianyungang and Kazakhstan the New Eurasian Land Bridge or Second Eurasian Continental Bridge. In addition to Kazakhstan, the railways connect with other countries in Central Asia and the Middle East, including Iran. With the October 2013 completion of the rail link across the Bosphorus under the Marmaray project, the New Eurasian Land Bridge now theoretically connects to Europe via Central and South Asia.
Proposed expansion of the Eurasian Land Bridge includes construction of a railway across Kazakhstan that is the same gauge as Chinese and European railways (standard gauge, as opposed to 1,520 mm gauge in the former Russian Empire and the Soviet Union), rail links to India, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, construction of a rail tunnel and highway bridge across the Bering Strait to connect the Trans-Siberian to the North American rail system, and construction of a rail tunnel between South Korea and Japan. The United Nations has proposed further expansion of the Eurasian Land Bridge, including the Trans-Asian Railway project.
History
Commercial traffic between Europe and Asia took place along the Silk Road from at least the 2nd millennium BC. The Silk Road was not a specific thoroughfare, but a general route used by traders to travel, much of it by land, between the two continents along the Eurasian Steppes through Central Asia. The route was used to exchange goods, ideas and people primarily between China and India and the Mediterranean and helped create a single-world system of trade between the civilisations of Europe and Asia.Christian; Ōtsuka, p. 42.
Exports from Asia transported along the Silk Road included fabrics, carpets, furs, weapons, utensils, metals, farm produce, livestock and slaves. Civilisations active in trading during the road's history included Scythia, Ancient and Byzantine Greece, the Han and Tang dynasties, Parthia, Rouran, Sogdiana, Göktürks, Xiongnu, Yuezhi and the Mongol Empire.Christian.
Beginning in the 5th century AD, new land routes between Asia and Europe developed further to the north. Many of these routes passed through Yugra and extended to the Baltic region. The Khazars, Volga Bulgaria, and the Rus' Khaganate were active in trading along the northern trade routes.
Traffic along the southern Silk Road routes greatly diminished with the fall of Constantinople in the 15th century and development of the sea route around the Cape of Good Hope in the 16th century. By the 18th century, European influence on trade and new national boundaries severely restricted the movement of traders along all land routes between Europe and China, and overland trade between East Asia and Europe virtually disappeared.
Trans-Siberian Railway
The Trans-Siberian Railway and its various associated branches and supporting lines, completed in 1916, established the first rail connection between Europe and Asia, from Moscow to Vladivostok. The line, at , is the longest rail line in the world.Rodrigue; Wehrfritz.
The Trans-Siberian connects the Russian Pacific ports of Vladivostok and Nakhodka with Moscow. Rail links at Moscow allow passengers and freight to connect to train lines running further west into Europe. By making further transfers, passengers and freight can eventually reach Western European seaports.Ōtsuka, pp. 48–49. The Trans-Siberian also connects with North Korea (e.g. via Dandong in Northeastern China, or directly at Khasan south of Vladivostok).Hisako Tsuji, p. 13Trans-Korean Main Line (At the official Russian Railways site)
A fully electrified and double-tracked line, the Trans-Siberian Railway line is capable of transporting around 100 million tons of freight annually. The line can handle up to 200,000 TEU of containerized international transit freight per year.Transsiberian Railway (At the Russian Railways official site)
A more northerly east–west route across Siberia, parallel to the Trans-Siberian line and known as the Baikal–Amur Mainline, was mostly completed in 1989. It terminates at the Pacific ports of Vanino and Sovetskaya Gavan. Although this line is comparatively little used (the management mentions 6 million tons of freight per year, not indicating the year), the management expects the line to be fully used in the foreseeable future for oil and copper ore exports, and has plans to double-track it.Baikal – Amur Main Line (At the Russian Railways official site)
While the Trans-Siberian has always been used by the Tsarist, Soviet and modern Russian governments to project political power into their territories in Asia, in the 1960s it was opened by the USSR as an international trade route connecting the Western Pacific with Europe. But there were increasing problems with freight shipments on the line, with dilapidated rail infrastructures, theft, damaged freight, late trains, inflated freight fees, uncertain scheduling of return of containers, and geopolitical tension. Thus by the 1990s, use of the railway for international trade had almost ceased.Rodrigue, Ōtsuka, p. 49; Wehrfritz.
According to Hofstra University, as of 2001 there was renewed interest in using the Trans-Siberian as a route across Asia to Europe. Also, the Trans-Siberian links directly to railways which ultimately connect, via Finland and Sweden, to the year-round ice-free port of Narvik in Norway. At Narvik, freight can be transshipped to ships to cross the Atlantic to North America. Rail links from Russia also connect to Rotterdam, but may encounter greater congestion and delays along this route. The trade route between the east coast of North America and eastern Russia using the Trans-Siberian is often called the Northern East West Freight Corridor.Rodrigue.
In an effort to attract use of the Trans-Siberian to transport goods from Japan, China, and Korea to Europe, in the mid-1990s Russia lowered tariffs on freight using the railway. As a result, freight volume over the rail line doubled in 1999 and 2000.Wehrfritz.
In February and March 2011, Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism sponsored a test of the route by shipping roof tiles to Europe via the Trans-Siberian. The tiles were transported by ship from Hamada, Shimane to Vladivostok, then by the railway to Moscow. The transit time was expected to be 30 days, in comparison with the 50 days on average it takes for cargo to travel by ship from Hamada to ports in western Russia. If successful, the ministry would use the results of the test to encourage other Japanese companies to use the Trans-Siberian over the sea route.Kyodo News, "Land, sea routes to Russia tested", The Japan Times, 1 March 2011, p. 7.
In 2011, a daily direct container rail service began carrying car parts from Leipzig, Germany, to inland Shenyang, China, through Siberia in 23 days.DB Schenker to launch daily freight train to China Railway Gazette International, 30 September 2011. Accessed: 4 October 2011.
In 2013 a direct container, pallet, and general cargo rail service began, from Łódź, Poland, to inland Chengdu, China, through Siberia in 14 days, 3 days each week.
According to Russian statistics, the amount of international container shipments transiting annually through Russia over the Trans-Siberian grew by a factor of 7 between 2009 and 2014, reaching 131,000 TEU (55,000 physical containers) in 2014.Транзитные контейнерные перевозки по Транссибу в сообщении с КНР растут опережающими темпами. За январь – сентябрь 2015 года перевезено 66 тыс. контейнеров, что на 11 тыс. больше, чем за весь 2014 год. (Transit of containers over the Trans-Siberian from P.R. China is increasing rapidly. 66,000 containers has been transported during the January to September 2015, which is 11,000 more than during the entire 2014)
Belarusian Railways reported similar statistics: in 2014, the volume of direct container traffic from China to Western Europe crossing Belarus amounted to 40,600 TEU, on 25 direct container train routes. This constituted over 20% of Belarusian Railway's entire volume of container transportation that year, 193,100 TEU.BC, Belarusian Railways: Volume of rail freight transport carried between China and EU via Belarus tripled in 2014 ( 10 February 2015, "UIC eNews" Nr 435) This was still much less than 0.1% of the number of containers that travel via China's sea ports (some 170 million TEU).
China and the land bridge Direct connections between Russia and China
The original Moscow–Vladivostok route, completed in 1904, cut across China's northeastern provinces, or Manchuria; the section of the railway located within China was known as the Chinese Eastern Railway. While the more northerly Trans-Siberian route, located entirely on Russian soil, was completed in 1916, the former Chinese Eastern Railway route continues as an important connector between the two countries' railway networks.
The western border point (Zabaykalsk/Manzhouli) and the line connecting it to the Trans-Siberian main line, are now being upgraded, with the goal of enabling the railway by 2010 to pass 30 freight trains in each direction across the border, each one up to 71 cars long. The cross-border freight volume at this rail crossing is expected to reach 25.5 million tons by 2010. Забайкальская железная дорога | Инвестиционный проект "Южный ход" | Общие сведения (Transbaikal Railway: The Southern Branch investment project: General information) (Not dated, but appear to be written ca. 2005)
Besides cargo (principally, Russian oil exported to China), this crossing sees a direct weekly passenger train, Moscow–Beijing, as well as some local passenger trains.Реконструкция пункта перестановки вагонов: В круглосуточном режиме на станции Забайкальск Забайкальской железной дороги ведется реконструкция пункта перестановки пассажирских вагонов ("Reconstruction of the bogie exchange facility: workers at Zabaykalsk Station of the Transbaikalian Railway are working round the clock, renovating the passenger railcar bogie exchange facility"). (Transbaikalian Railway official web site, 8 June 2008 The eastern border point of the former Chinese Eastern Railway, at Suifenhe/Grodekovo, sees significant use as well, with over 8 million tons of freight crossing the border there in 2007,Primorye Export to China Increased: Mainly timber and fertilizers are exported (Vladivostok Times, 5 December 2007); the article reported over 8 million tons over the first 11 months of 2007 and regular cross-border passenger service.poezda.net,
A third, little-known and less used, rail connection between Russia and China was built farther south, between