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 project Eraliyevo - Kuryk
Rail project Korgas - Zhetigen
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.