Kazakhstan
2.4 Kazakhstan Railway Assessment

Kazakhstan Railway Assessment

Transportation by rail in Kazakhstan is very important. Kazakhstan Railways provide 68% of all cargo and passenger traffic to over 57% of the country. 15,079 km in common carrier service, excluding industrial lines.
Economic and geographic features of Kazakhstan (its vast territory, uneven spatial distribution of population clusters and of natural resources) make the transport component of the economy one of the most size able in the world and determine high dependence of the economy on the transport networks.
Being sandwiched between Europe and Asia, Kazakhstan boasts of a great transit potential, as there is no alternatives for Asian states to link to Russia and Europe.
Relatively diverse landscape and availability of natural stone reserves allow unrestricted development of railways and automobile routes.
Automobile and railways routes account for a major share of the total above-ground transport routes (about 88.4 & 14 thousand km respectively). Total length of navigable waterways makes up 3.9 thousand km, and the total of air routes makes up 61 thousand km. Density per every 1000 km 2 stands at 5,1 km for railways, at 32,4 km for automobile routes with hard surface, and at 1,5 km for in-land navigable waterways.
At the current stage, there is a problem of poor condition of the transport sector fixed assets, obsolete infrastructure and technology.
The share of transportation costs in the final cost of the goods makes up 8% and 11% for in-land railways and automobile traffic respectively, while in industrialized countries these indicators normally make up 4-4,5%. As a result, the transport burden on the economy exceeds that on the major industrialized nations twice on average. By cargo intensity index Kazakhstan’s economy is about five times less efficient, as transport component of every 1 USD of GDP makes no less than 9 ton-km, while in EU cargo intensity is less than 1 ton-km/dollar of GDP.
As the Kazakhstani rail system was designed during the Soviet era rail routes were designed ignoring intersoviet borders and to the needs of Soviet planning. This has caused anamolies such as the route from Ural'sk to Aktobe briefly now passing through Russian territory. It also means routes might not now suit modern day Kazakhstani needs.

International transport corridors cross the territory of Kazakhstan and are formed on the basis of transport infrastructure existing in the country:

Northern Corridor of Trans-Asian Railway Main (TARM): Western Europe – China, Korean Peninsula and Japan via Russian and Kazakhstan (section Dostyk – Aktogai - Sayak – Mointy – Astana – Petropavlovsk (Presnogorkovskaya)).

Southern Corridor of TARM: South-Eastern Europe – China and South-Eastern Asia via Turkey, Iran, Central Asian states and Kazakhstan (section Dostyk – Aktogai – Almaty – Shu – Arys – Saryagash).

TRACECA: Eastern Europe – Central Asia via the Black Sea, Caucasus and the Caspian Sea (section Dostyk – Almaty – Aktau).

North-South: Northern Europe – Gulf States via Russia and Iran, with Kazakhstan’s participation in the following sections: sea port Aktau – Ural regions of Russia and Aktau – Atyrau.

Railway Companies and Consortia

For information on Kazakhstan Railway company contact details, please see the followinng link:

4.3 Kazakhstan Railway Company Contact List

For information on Kazakhstan Railway Regulations details, please see the followinng document:

Kazakhstan Railway Regulation Information

For information on Kazakhstan Railway Projects, please see the following documents:

Rail Projects

Rail project Eraliyevo - Kuryk

Rail project Korgas - Zhetigen

Rail project Uzen - Gorgan

Rail project Uzen - State Boundary

Note: The information provided in the attached documents, which has been taken from the old DLCA, does not match the structure of the new LCA and is therefore provided separately.

 

Jump to top