OREANDA-NEWS. On October 04, 2008, Vladimir Yakunin, the President of Russian Railways, took part in the opening ceremony of the project to reconstruct the Trans-Korean Main Line between Tumangan and Rajin in North Korea and the construction of a container terminal at the port of Rajin, reported the press-centre of Russian Railways.

The first link of the new section was laid at the North Korean border station Tumangan during the ceremony. A total of 54 kilometres of track will be built and ten railway stations, three tunnels and more than 40 bridges and other objects reconstructed. As a result, the capacity of the section between Tumangan and Rajin will increase to twelve pairs of trains a day carrying up to 4 million tons of cargo.

In the initial phase of the project, Russian Railways aims to attract 100,000 Twenty-Foot Equivalent (TEUs) Units of containers from the Asia-Pacific countries, especially South Korea, to the Trans-Siberian Main Line.

“As early as 2011, it will be possible to handle more than 35,000 containers from Khasan, with the figure rising to 70,000 in 2012 and to 100,000 in 2013,” said Vladimir Yakunin.

The President of Russian Railways also noted that the reconstruction of the Tumangan - Rajin section is part of a larger pilot project to modernise the Trans-Korean Main Line.

“Given the possibilities of the Trans-Siberian, the restoration of the Trans-Korean Main Line would allow us to create the longest Euro-Asian transport corridor of over 10,000 kilometres. The delivery time for containers being shipped East to West by rail will be cut by half compared to the sea route,” Vladimir Yakunin stressed at the ceremony.

The reconstruction project of the Trans-Korean Main Line and its integration with the Trans-Siberian Main Line gained urgency after the decision to restore the rail link between the two parts of the peninsula at the historic summit in Pyongyang in June 2000 between the leaders of South and North Korea. The line was effectively severed after the country was divided in 1953.

The total cost of project is tentatively estimated at EUR150 million. The outlay should be recovered from operating the infrastructure and transit container traffic through the port of Rajin and further access to Russia’s rail network.

It is anticipated that the JV will independently set tariffs for the transshipment of containers at the port of Rajin and for transit shipments on the Rajin - Tumangan section. The tariffs will depend on market conditions.

The rehabilitation and reconstruction of the Trans-Korean Main Line, which according to provisional estimates will cost between USD7-8 billion, could be achieved in the framework of an international consortium. This consortium could be open to any countries and companies interested in the project, an idea supported by the governments of Russia and of South and North Korea. Investors from Germany, Italy, Finland, Japan, China and other countries have already expressed interest

In the short term, however, it will be possible to provide direct cargo services for transporting containers along the entire route from Pusan to customers in Russia, the CIS and Europe. As part of the pilot project it is also planned to set up a logistics company with the participation of South Korean freight forwarders. According to their calculations, this route could initially attract up to 100,000 containers each year from the sea. The terminal is designed to handle 400,000 TEUs, but the future expansion of the port will increase container capacity to 600-700,000 TEUs per year.

In order to increase freight traffic, the question of granting special tariff conditions for shipments on Russian territory is now under consideration. This will entail reduced fees for the use of railway infrastructure. It is also planned to simplify the customs and border formalities at the Khasan and Tumangan stations to create optimal conditions for the movement of goods.

Another possibility under consideration is the reconstruction of the line between the port of Rajin and the Chinese border as part of a Russian-North Korean joint venture followed by joint operation and management. This would help attract Chinese goods to Rajin.

As a result of this project, Russian Railways will have access to yet another port in the Asia-Pacific region.

In view of that and the planned increase in the transport of goods from the Asia-Pacific region through Russia’s existing Pacific ports (Poset, Zarubino, Slavyanka), Russian Railways plans a major infrastructure upgrade of the 240-km section of track between Baranovsky - Khasan, which links the Trans-Korean Main Line with the Trans-Siberian.

At the moment, a feasibility study on the modernisation project of the Ussuriisk - Baranovsky - Khasan line is currently being finalised. Implementing the project solutions will increase the through capacity of the section between Baranovski and Khassan to 20 pairs of trains a day and its freight capacity to 17 million tons a year. Provisional estimates of the investment required to upgrade the infrastructure amount to over 10 billion roubles.