CIS: Transportation Infrastructure

Most of the transportation infrastructure in the region is rail oriented, with a large variation between Russia and the CIS. During the era of the Soviet Union, most of the rail lines were built for the transit of goods only and were found in the more urban areas. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, many of the smaller states that were created did not have the appropriate infrastructure in order to sustain economic growth. Road density in the CIS states in 1993 was approximately 35 km/100,000 of the population, far below the European Union at 100 km/100,000 of the population. (Aghion and Shankerman1999) The main problem with this ratio in the CIS is that although rail can be an effective means of transportation for manufactured goods out of the country, the internal distribution of goods and citizens suffers. Even with the extensive rail networks that were built under the Soviet Union, passenger rail and the development of roads was neglected.

At the end of the Second World War, the International Road Transport Union (IRU) was created in 1948 as a way to “find solutions to the problems affecting road transport…[and] work with government bodies to develop unified and simplified rules governing road transport, customs, and road safety” (IRU 2002). Although the IRU was created to deal with the rules and regulations of trucking goods across borders, after the Cold War the IRU took an interest in the potential of road transport in the newly created CIS. In 1998, the IRU established a Permanent Delegation to the CIS in Moscow, which aimed at promoting “the development of North-South and East-West transport corridors within the territory of the CIS, as a major contribution to the economic development of the entire Eurasian region” (IRU 2002).