Belt and Road Initiative: more competition between sea and rail? A generalized cost approach

Eurasiatic rail freight transport has experienced a dramatic growth during the past years. Since 2011, rail traffic between China and Europe experienced a spectacular growth as the transport volumes increased from 25,000 TEU in 2014 to 175,000 TEU in 2017. The main research question of this paper is what the future will bring for rail compared with the other modes on the China–Europe connection. More specifically, to what extent will rail become a real competitor? In this research, a combination is made between literature search, scenario development, and cost modeling. The Belt and Road policy initiative, as a main driver, is the starting point for the specification of the corridors and the scenarios to be considered. Equally, the barriers to the Belt and Road path are identified. With that information, a number of scenarios of future rail development on the connection were derived, which were the basis for the calculation of the route-generalized costs. Next to that, additional three different sensitivity analysis are performed to assess the impact of some inputs used in the cost modeling. Based on these calculations, conclusions are drawn with respect to the possible competitive advantage of the rail land bridge compared with the maritime route.