IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jlogis/v5y2021i1p18-d521669.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Development Status and Future Trends for Eurasian Container Land Bridge Transport

Author

Listed:
  • Olli-Pekka Hilmola

    (Kouvola Unit, LUT University, Tykkitie 1, FIN-45100 Kouvola, Finland
    Estonian Maritime Academy, Tallinn University of Technology (Taltech), Kopli 101, 11712 Tallinn, Estonia)

  • Weidong Li

    (School of Economics & Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China)

  • Yulia Panova

    (Department of E-Commerce, Luoyang Normal University, Luoyang 471934, China)

Abstract

For decades, trade between Europe and China has grown consistently, which has resulted in increased container transportation volumes. Such transportation has been dominated by sea-based options. However, over the years, an air-based mode of transport was developed, while it has lately become increasingly popular to use railways utilizing the Trans-Siberian land bridge. This latter approach boomed amid the COVID-19 crisis in 2020. However, the railway container boom in Eurasia has deeper roots than just the COVID-19 era. As is illustrated in this research work, international trade containers (trade between Russia and other countries, mostly China) and transit containers (e.g., serving the Chinese–EU route) were already showing some significance as early as 2003–2004. In 2020, their volume was already measured in the millions, regardless of the railway data source being used. This is well above the starting period in the 1980s and 1990s, when total annual volumes were around 0.1 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU). Container capacity has developed over the years, first being used for international trade and only lately for transit. As a preliminary comparison to air freight, the growth rate was roughly double that in the two-decade observation period.

Suggested Citation

  • Olli-Pekka Hilmola & Weidong Li & Yulia Panova, 2021. "Development Status and Future Trends for Eurasian Container Land Bridge Transport," Logistics, MDPI, vol. 5(1), pages 1-12, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jlogis:v:5:y:2021:i:1:p:18-:d:521669
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2305-6290/5/1/18/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2305-6290/5/1/18/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zhang, Xu & Zhang, Wei & Lee, Paul Tae-Woo, 2020. "Importance rankings of nodes in the China Railway Express network under the Belt and Road Initiative," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 134-147.
    2. Claudio Ferrari & Alessio Tei, 2020. "Effects of BRI strategy on Mediterranean shipping transport," Journal of Shipping and Trade, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 1-18, December.
    3. Olli-Pekka Hilmola, 2019. "The Sulphur Cap in Maritime Supply Chains," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-319-98545-9, January.
    4. Jiang, Yonglei & Sheu, Jiuh-Biing & Peng, Zixuan & Yu, Bin, 2018. "Hinterland patterns of China Railway (CR) express in China under the Belt and Road Initiative: A preliminary analysis," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 189-201.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jieyin Lyu & Fuli Zhou & Yandong He, 2023. "Digital Technique-Enabled Container Logistics Supply Chain Sustainability Achievement," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(22), pages 1-28, November.
    2. Olli-Pekka Hilmola & Weidong Li, 2023. "Drivers of railway container transports between China and Finland," Journal of Shipping and Trade, Springer, vol. 8(1), pages 1-19, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Qian, Peipei & Yang, Zhongzhen & Lian, Feng, 2024. "The structural and spatial evolution of the China Railway Express network," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    2. Zhang, Yilin & Zhang, Anming & Wang, Kun & Zheng, Shiyuan & Yang, Hangjun & Hong, Junjie, 2023. "Impact of CR Express and intermodal freight transport competition on China-Europe Route: Emission and welfare implications," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    3. Qi, Yingxiu & Harrod, Steven & Psaraftis, Harilaos N. & Lang, Maoxiang, 2022. "Transport service selection and routing with carbon emissions and inventory costs consideration in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    4. Liu, Jiaguo & Meng, Hui, 2024. "Can China railway express enhance the economic-trade vitality of cities? A spatial empirical evidence from China," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 121-138.
    5. Weidong Li & Olli-Pekka Hilmola & Yulia Panova, 2019. "Container Sea Ports and Dry Ports: Future CO 2 Emission Reduction Potential in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-21, March.
    6. Wei, Hairui & Lee, Paul Tae-Woo, 2021. "Designing a coordinated horizontal alliance system for China’s inland ports with China railway express platforms along the Silk Road Economic Belt," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    7. He, Peiming & Zhang, Jiaming & Chen, Litai, 2022. "Time is money: Impact of China-Europe Railway Express on the export of laptop products from Chongqing to Europe," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 312-322.
    8. Zhou, Yaoming & Kundu, Tanmoy & Goh, Mark & Sheu, Jiuh-Biing, 2021. "Multimodal transportation network centrality analysis for Belt and Road Initiative," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    9. Jingjing Cao & Tianyi Guo & Yan Chen, 2023. "Modeling Government Subsidy Strategies for Railway Carriers: Environmental Impacts and Industry Competition," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(14), pages 1-26, July.
    10. Gong, Xu & Li, Zhi-Chun, 2022. "Determination of subsidy and emission control coverage under competition and cooperation of China-Europe Railway Express and liner shipping," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 323-335.
    11. Feng, Fenling & Zhang, Jiaqi & Liu, Chengguang, 2023. "Integrated pricing mechanism of China Railway Express whole-process logistics based on the Stackelberg game," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 609(C).
    12. Xueguo Xu & Chen Xu & Wenxin Zhang, 2022. "Research on the Destruction Resistance of Giant Urban Rail Transit Network from the Perspective of Vulnerability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(12), pages 1-26, June.
    13. Olli-Pekka Hilmola & Weidong Li, 2023. "Drivers of railway container transports between China and Finland," Journal of Shipping and Trade, Springer, vol. 8(1), pages 1-19, December.
    14. Zhang, Qiang & Pu, Shunhao & Luo, Lihua & Liu, Zhichao & Xu, Jie, 2022. "Revisiting important ports in container shipping networks: A structural hole-based approach," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 239-248.
    15. Yulia Panova & Albert Tan & Olli-Pekka Hilmola & M. H. Puvindran & Xu Hongsheng & Weidong Li, 2019. "Evaluation of e-commerce location and entry to China – implications on shipping and trade," Journal of Shipping and Trade, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 1-25, December.
    16. Claudio Ferrari & Alessio Tei, 2020. "Effects of BRI strategy on Mediterranean shipping transport," Journal of Shipping and Trade, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 1-18, December.
    17. Lee, Paul Tae-Woo & Song, Zhaoyu, 2023. "Exploring a new development direction of the Belt and Road Initiative in the transitional period towards the post-COVID-19 era," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    18. Shujuan Guo & Cuijie Diao & Gang Li & Katsuhiko Takahashi, 2021. "The Two-Echelon Dual-Channel Models for the Intermodal Container Terminals of the China Railway Express Considering Container Accumulation Modes," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-19, March.
    19. Jonathan Doh & Pawan Budhwar & Geoffrey Wood, 2021. "Long-term energy transitions and international business: Concepts, theory, methods, and a research agenda," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 52(5), pages 951-970, July.
    20. Yang, Zhongzhen & Sun, Yu & Lee, Paul Tae-Woo, 2020. "Impact of the development of the China-Europe Railway Express – A case on the Chongqing international logistics center," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 244-261.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jlogis:v:5:y:2021:i:1:p:18-:d:521669. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.