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Tariffs do not tolerate emptiness
Russian Railways plans to raise tariffs on empty gondola cars. According to Kommersant's market sources, the increase will be 10% in 2025 and 5% per year from 2026 to 2030. Officially, measures are needed to stimulate owners of gondola cars arriving at Far Eastern ports with coal to pick up their containers. However, gondola car owners are not very interested in this due to the difficulties of returning gondola cars from central Russia, where containers are transported, to Kuzbass, where they are loaded with coal. And experts say that 85% of gondola cars will still be empty in ports, since there are no containers to load them, and this plan will only increase the costs of shippers.
Tariffs for empty gondola cars may be raised to encourage owners to provide them for container shipments from the Far East. At a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Savelyev on September 20, it was decided to instruct the Ministry of Transport and Russian Railways to prepare a corresponding proposal and send it to the FAS (Kommersant has a copy of the minutes).
JSC Russian Railways reported that container exports of gondola cars in September reached a record 1,579 TEU per day, which is 2.1 times more than in September last year, and promised to increase the number of container trains consisting of gondola cars from 12 TEU in October. 15. However, owners of gondola cars aimed at loading coal from Siberia and the East, the main generation, are not always ready to move with containers to the Central Federal District, from where these goods are sent. (CFD) and the northwest. Because the gondola cars still have to be returned for loading back to Kuzbass.
Tariff measures are intended to facilitate this. According to Kommersant, Russian Railways proposes to additionally index the empty mileage of gondola cars by 10% in 2025 and by 5% per year in 2026-2030.
Russian Railways declined to comment on these figures, noting that container exports from the Far East continue to grow, but the load on the region's terminals remains high. "The delivery of empty platforms to the Far East for the removal of containers in conditions of insufficient infrastructure capacity will harm the national economy by limiting cargo transportation," the company assures. At the same time, after unloading coal at the port, a certain number of gondola cars suitable for loading containers return empty to central Russia." Vitaly Savelyev's office confirmed to Kommersant that a possible increase in tariffs had been discussed and "this issue is being worked out." The Ministry of Transport did not comment on the situation.
The Union of Railway Transport Operators (URTO) believes that the proposed law "will lead to a number of negative consequences that will also affect socially significant regions of the country." We emphasize that reducing empty run costs is an important cost management task for both vehicle owners and operators. This is due to the fact that empty run costs average approximately 50% of the operator's total costs. According to URTO, there is no need to further stimulate the reduction of the vacancy rate. According to the Association, gondola cars can be used for container transportation if proper planning of container transportation is ensured and information on the number of containers, stations, loading locations, and the location of all containers is disclosed to operators. The gondola car fleet located in the eastern region allows the company to independently form a "pool" of ready empty gondola cars from various operators. As stated in the SOZHT, JSC "Russian Railways" must supply empty fitting platforms to the places of transshipment of containers from gondola cars and ensure the timely return of empty gondola cars after unloading of containers to loading platforms in the west. Siberian Railway.
An industry representative told Kommersant: "The problem of the container import/export imbalance has always existed, and we solved it by sending a suitable platform." But now Russian Railways is reducing its load factors by almost a third lower than in 2022, and is offering to load containers into gondola cars. "In principle, all operators are ready to accept transit shipments. But the problem is that Russian Railways does not understand what "passage" means. For them, shipments are made on free gondola cars in the Far Port. They are all cars." They do not understand that they do not carry containers. It is inconvenient to release cars according to the owners and purposes of the company, so other "brilliant" solutions have appeared - to increase tariffs, to take away the right to use cars free of charge, and to leave the costs and responsibility under the contract, Kommersant's interlocutors believe. And this continues despite the fact that companies that systematically transport containers in gondola cars to European regions will not be able to return gondola cars for loading to their main clients for several weeks due to defects in the housing and communal services of Russian Railways. As Kommersant's interlocutor summarized, the problem is not the operator's unwillingness to transport, but the untested technology for returning gondola cars to Kuzbass from the Central Federal District, where they are delivered in containers.
Farid Khusainov, an expert at the Institute for Economic and Infrastructure Regulation at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, notes that empty mileage has increased as the number of gondola cars used to transport containers has increased. has decreased significantly.
In 2018-2021, this figure was 42%, in 2023 - 40.5% and for 8 months of 2024 - 38.6%. But adding additional containers to empty gondola cars would be clearly unreasonable, experts say. According to his estimates, more than 80% of the empty gondola cars remaining in the Far East do not follow the container cargo flow, but are used to transport coal for the needs of housing and communal services in the eastern regions of Western Siberia. service. Mr. Khusainov says that it is impossible to load containers, since there is no need for such a flow of containers. At the same time, the number of imported containers that can be loaded into gondola cars is significantly less than the empty gondola cars that form in the ports of the Far East. According to him, the latter averages 7.5 thousand per day, of which about 900 cars (12%) are loaded with containers, the rest are returned empty for coal to the nearest road or to Kuzbass or sent to central Russia. Farid Khusainov says that regardless of the decision taken, about 85% of gondola cars in the Far East will still be delivered empty, but with "irritating" increased tariffs, according to estimates of companies operating in the Far East. The solutions he proposed will simply increase the tariff burden on the economy of the shipper, he concluded.