MINSK, 17 November (BelTA) – Belarusian Railways and other participants of the combined transport train project Viking discussed prospects of the project's development, the press service of the Belarusian railway operator told BelTA after the meeting in Tbilisi, Georgia.
According to the source, during the meeting the sides decided to update the agreement on cargo transportation using the combined transport train Viking. The action plan to develop the project in 2016 was agreed as well.
There were 13 items on the agenda of the meeting. Participants of the conference summed up the train's performance results in 2015 and agreed to continue working to expand the geographic availability of the service. In particular, Azerbaijani railways will be invited to participate in the project. It will allow transporting cargoes from Central Asia and China along the TRACECA corridor (Transport Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Asia).
Attention was paid to discussing tariff terms for the next year and keeping them competitive. The sides agreed to preserve this year's level of tariffs on container transportation by Viking trains in H1 2016.
The conference in Tbilisi gathered representatives of the railway operators from Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, and Georgia as well as operators in charge of the Viking train service.
The combined transport train Viking is a joint project of the railway operators of Lithuania, Ukraine, and Belarus, stevedoring companies and ports of Klaipeda, Ilyichevsk, and Odessa. The combined transport train Viking travels via Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania and connects a number of maritime container lines in the Baltic region with a similar system of the Black Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Caspian Sea. Work is now in progress to extend the Viking train service in the direction of Turkey. In the future the train service may be extended to Azerbaijan and across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan.
In January-October 2015 the Viking train transported over 33,000 containers in 20-foot container terms along Belarusian railways.
