Title: Finnish-Russian transport and business expectations

Authors: Tommi Inkinen, Ulla Tapaninen

Addresses: Department of Geography, University of Helsinki, Finland. ' Centre of Maritime Studies, University of Turku, Finland

Abstract: With the collapse of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s, Russia lost most of its ports on the Baltic Sea. We examine the business expectations and views on the current bottlenecks and future prospects of Finnish-Russian transport. Our primary data were collected in interviews with the representatives of the transport industry. We also use statistics to support the interviews. The interviewees are the managers and executives responsible for Russian transport. We review the previous research on Russian trade and transportation systems. We then present the results of the interviews, followed by an analysis and discussion and conclusions as to how Finnish companies see the challenges and opportunities of Russian transit. Finally, the future research priorities are identified. The interviewees consider that Finland will remain an important transit route for high-quality products due to the availability of add-on services and the reliability, safety, security, competitive infrastructure and know-how of Finnish transport providers.

Keywords: transit; intermodal transportation; freight; logistics; intermodality; corridors; Finland; Russia; Finnish-Russian transport.

DOI: 10.1504/WRITR.2009.026208

World Review of Intermodal Transportation Research, 2009 Vol.2 No.4, pp.279 - 295

Published online: 28 May 2009 *

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