"We are to streamline passenger customs and frontier checks. If they go on with the train on the move, the route will take a mere nine hours, as against present-day fourteen," he said.
As for long-term prospects of Russian-Ukrainian transport partnership, blueprints are coming up for a container transport Black Sea port, to cater for both countries. Search is on for a convenient site to host a terminal that will hold huge ships carrying four thousand containers each. Good highways and railways must be near the tentative port, too, added the minister.
With the terminal commissioned, Russia will guarantee transits to an amount with which the Trans-Siberian Rail presently fails to cope, he said.
Russia and Ukraine are pondering prospects to use a 200 kilometre broad-gauge railway via Poland for transit container transport to go on to the Trans-Siberian without overloading the rail. Slawkow in Poland promises a good site for a major container terminal, said Igor Levitin.
