Border-crossing constraints, railways and transit transports in Estonia

North-East Europe has served as a general cargo transit area for Russia and other emerging economies of the East for decades. Typically, this activity was initiated with road transport, but after some years of operation, border-crossings became problematic and in some cases even impossible to conduct. Volume of transit transport was therefore severely constrained. As one remedy to sustain transit traffic, the Baltic States have implemented container trains to eastern destinations. Even though, overall transit traffic through Estonia has decreased mainly due to the increased volumes of Russian seaports, the container transit traffic has increased steadily: Volumes were really minor a decade ago, but have increased from several thousand containers up to above 50,000 TEU in 2013. This has enabled hinterland transport and incoming container volumes in the port of Tallinn to develop. This research work analyzes not only second hand data regarding Estonian general cargo transit, but also includes case study visits. The case company has established many international container train connections. Container transit traffic has an optimistic future outlook in Estonia. However, the main operational constraints are related to gauge widths, border-crossing operations, delivery time issues, low price level of road transport, unpredictable Russian market and legislation and infrastructure investments.