Initially, the line operated four ferryboats, with an average carrying capacity of sixteen freight carriages or eight passenger cars. By 1976, freight shipments had reached three million tons a year, with 1.6 million tons going from the Crimea and 1.4 million, in the opposite direction. The ferryboats carried freights from the Crimea, the republic of Moldova, and the North Caucasus, as well as six passenger train pairs bound for the Chelyabinsk area, in the southern Urals.
A project is currently underway to restore the ferry line for rail carriages in the Strait of Kerch. It is being implemented in keeping with a Russian-Ukrainian presidential agreement. There is no direct ferry line in the Strait of Kerch at the moment. A vast majority of cargoes come into the Crimea from eastern regions of Russia and former Soviet republics in Central Asia, such as Kazakhstan. The Caucasus-Crimea ferry line will reduce the time needed for the delivery of such cargoes by several days while also making the entire transportation process a lot simpler and less costly. At this point, trains that run, for instance, from Siberia to the Crimea waste a lot of time on a detour around Ukraine.
If restarted, the Crimea-Caucasus ferry line will help boost the transit capacity of the port and the adjacent areas, raise the investment attractiveness of the region, and develop economic cooperation between Russia and Ukraine. If competitive fares are set for users of Russia's railways, the implementation of the project will make it possible for part of the traffic to be redirected from the TRASEKA line toward the Russian rails, attracting an additional 3.2 million tons of freight in the year 2005.
Sea ferryboats are used in transporting train carriages and tank cars with cargoes from central, southern and eastern regions of Russia, as well as from countries of Central Asia and the Transcaucasia, to the Crimea, southwestern Ukraine and Europe.
The prevalent types of cargoes travelling along this route include coal, coke, and refined oil products. Cereals, mineral fertilizers, ferrous metals also constitute a significant proportion of freight traffic here. And there are quite a few passenger trains to be carried, too, especially in the summer season.
The project is of much significance in the context of an interstate program for economic reintegration of Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus. The implementation of this project will allow, among other things, to strengthen Russia's economic and strategic positions within the corridor North-South, to increase the presence of the Russian transportation fleet in the Black Sea, to use Crimea-Caucasus ferries for freight shipments from Siberia and Central Asia to the Crimea and southwestern Ukraine, and to shorten the distance by an average 1,500-2,000 kilometers for one round trip.
Ferry is one of the most effective means of transportation to be used in intermodal shipments, provided there is a balanced passenger and freight traffic, developed communications facilities, and a transportation port network with rail links.
In keeping with a federal target program for the development of Russia's transport system through the year 2010, the federal district South will see the construction of several ferry links for rail carriages: in the Caspian sea, as part of the transportation corridor North-South (Makhachkala-Turkmenbashi (Turkmenistan), Makhachkala-Aktau (Kazakhstan), and Makhachkala-Iran), in the Black Sea (Caucasus-Crimea, Caucasus-Poti (Georgia), and Caucasus-Varna (Bulgaria)).
The above ferry lines will be commissioned and provided with ferryboats in several stages, asnew ferries and docking facilities are built and some of the existing port terminals are upgraded.
