Trucking and sea ports

Table 10 unites comments regarding the current state of the motor and marine transport.

Table 10. Comments related to truck and marine transportation.

Development of road infrastructure in the North-West part to improve connections with Finland, establishment of terminals with good connections to roads, including federal ones. But further development of road infrastructure in the region is impossible, because it is recreation zone.

All the trucks are equipped with special tools for tracing the working time of driver, so they are following all requirements stipulated in legislation of the Russian Federation.

The terminal network is developing. Road transport network has new high quality terminals in the optimal locations of good road links, as well as close to growth centres.

Development of terminals and roads outside the city supports development of the port of Saint-Petersburg and decrease the traffic within the city.

Regional and federal authorities are applying a lot of forces to develop marine transport in the region (ports of Ust-Luga, Primorsk, and Saint-Petersburg).

Further development of road transport depends on development of the infrastructure (roads), existing network of roads doesn’t provide good connection to different places (even if trucks are able to get to the place, there is no roads to that place).

For safety issues – quality of roads will not affect cargo strongly if the driver fixes cargo well. At the same time, low quality of roads had very negative influence on truck itself, which leads to increasing of amortization for equipment.

Development of road infrastructure is also influenced by corruption – huge funds are stolen when every construction or renovation is executed and final quality of works is not as good as it could be. In railway industry there is no such big loses, because it is very difficult to “hide” consequences of lack in funding.

During the season of washed out roads, roads are officially closed and cargo transportation is limited. … During the summer time these roads are repaired, but maintenance works are the main reason of traffic jams, which causes lead time increases.

There is a great shortage of road transport vehicles in Russia (especially in metropolitan areas).

Companies operating in Saint-Petersburg and the Leningrad region consider the area as

the main cargo gate between Russia and Europe, and stress the importance of Saint-Petersburg as a vital transit hub. According to interviewees, nowadays development

of transport infrastructure in this region can be observed with special attention paid to development of marine transport and ports in particular. Concurrent with development of ports, development of road and terminal infrastructure supporting ports can be observed.

At the same time, performance of motor transport at the moment has the direct influence on functioning and competitiveness of ports, located in the region.

Modern motor transport has significant drawbacks in its performance. They are mostly connected to the quality of the vehicle fleet and road infrastructure, which are the soft spots of motor transportation in case of Russia and strongly influence the overall quality of cargo delivery. The major part of interviewees expressed their opinion about the road infrastructure in negative way. They outlined, that motor roads in Russia have bad quality of cover. Several reasons for that were named: Road market is not regulated by the Ministry of Transportation and consequently there is no regulation of traffic and load on roads, development and construction of roads is influenced by lobbying, and complex geographical environment leads to destruction of roads and following it restriction for use some of roads during the winter time. Reconstruction of roads after winters takes a lot of money and time, and is also connected with restriction of carrying capacities. This causes time delays in cargo delivery and limits flexibility of motor transport in geography of its

services. Not enough developed road network together with seasonally closed roads make delivery of cargo to some destinations impossible.

Nowadays road market is not regulated and the majority of roads in Russia are free of charge. Budgetary money is not enough to cover all expenses of the sector. Thus, construction of roads with tolls or other fees are needed. To attract cargo carriers to those roads they should offer high level of cover and well developed roadside infrastructure.

Absence of payment for using the road on heavy traffic directions leads to congestion.

Traffic situation of roads is worsening due to car accidents, which often are the main reason for full stop of movement on the road. However, it is important to note that development of motor transport is directly dependent on development of road infrastructure. It was also mentioned by interviewees, that switching of part of cargo from roads to railways will allow repairing roads faster. Such a shift will decrease the total load on motorways, so the life cycle of cover will be longer.

Today, companies operating in this market expend some efforts to improve their performance. They rent or buy new trucks, install additional equipment to trace working time of drivers and operate agreeably to Russian legislation. Despite steps being taken, they are not enough for radical improvement of the current situation and overall condition of the road transportation is still low. Thus, it was noticed that the road infrastructure in the North-West region of the Leningrad region is well developed. It was outlined that this is a result of activities focused on development of the transport and logistics infrastructure under the framework of the region’s governments dedicated program.

Otherwise, the common opinion was supported - the road infrastructure as in the region, as in the whole country, does not satisfy existing market demand and quality standards.

Brief comparison of different modes of transport, based on interviews is presented below (Table 11).

Table 11. Comparison of railway, road and sea transport.

Railway Road Short sea

Main advantage predictability, well developed Cons raw materials are

the main cargo