Evaluation of long-term prospects of the structure of freight rail transportation

Abstract

The most important business of the domestic railway industry is freight transportation, which decisively affects the financial and economic stability and efficiency of the Russian railways. Successful activities in the field of rail freight transport are determined by both the volume and the structure of these transportations. In the long term perspective, there is a risk of a reduction in the freight base of railways due to the global paradigm of decarbonization of the economy, as well as the implementation of a “circular economy”, which assumes a continuous cycle of material processing with close to 100% utilization of products that have completed their life cycle and the use of appropriate materials for the production of new products. Reducing the consumption of coal, oil and petroleum products in the course of decarbonization will lead to a corresponding reduction in the volume of their transportation by rail, and the implementation of the “closed cycle economy” — to a reduction in the transportation of non‑hydrocarbon raw materials, which also occupies a significant share in rail transportation. Taking into account the noted trends, the article provides an expert categorization of goods transported by rail by the level of long‑term prospects. All freights are divided into four categories: non‑promising, low‑promising, promising and highly promising. Based on the proposed categorization with the use of retrospective data on rock loading of freights on railway transport, a significant change in the structure of loading was revealed in terms of its long‑term prospects. For a generalized evaluation of the level of long‑term prospects of the loading structure, a new indicator is proposed — an indicator of long‑term prospects of loading. Its retrospective analysis was carried out. The results of the analysis are given a qualitative evaluation based on the developed scale of zonal values of this indicator. The necessity of solving the problem of timely replacement of freights, the traffic volumes of which will decrease in the future due to structural changes, with freights with a higher level of long‑term prospects, has been substantiated. The target structure of freight loading on the railway network is proposed and the time horizon on which it is desirable to achieve it is substantiated. The directions for the development of research on this topic have been determined.