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Volga-Baltic Waterway

Volga-Baltic Waterway canal and river system, about 1,100 km long, links the Volga River and the St. Petersburg industrial area. The waterway was begun in 1709 to connect St. Petersburg with the interior. The major canals were built in the 1930s. In 1946, the Volga-Baltic Canal was put into operation. The United Deep Water River System of European Russia was thus completed. Northwest River Shipping reached the Volga while Volga Shipping got access to the Neva.

The Volga-Baltic Canal consists of the Moscow-Volga Canal, the Volga River, the Rybinsk Reservoir, the Mariinsk system (composed of the Sheksna River, the White Lake Canal, the Kovzha River, the Mariinsk Canal, and the Vytegra River), the Onega Canal, the Svir River, the Ladoga Canals, and the Neva River to St. Petersburg. The waterway was reconstructed and modernized in the early 1960s, the principal addition being a dam across the Sheksna River near Cherepovets, which deepened the waterway as far as the Kovzha River, facilitating the use of larger vessels. Beginning from 1964 the Caspian ships passed the Volga-Baltic canal and started operating in Northern Europe.

Creation of the Unified Deep Water System (UDWS) in the European part of Russia linking five seas through the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, Volga-Baltic Canal, Volga-Don Canal and Moscow Canal motivated the construction in the 1960s a unique transport fleet consisting of mixed river-sea shipping vessels of 1.4-5.5 thousand tons carrying capacity. These vessels are able to operate not only on inland waterways and lakes but also at sea areas. The fleet of such vessels made it possible to organize the international carriage of goods directly to foreign sea and river ports and vice versa. By 2005 more than 700 river-sea shipping vessels were used for international cargo transportation.

In 2006, total volume of cargo transported by the Volga-Baltic waterway fell to 17.6 million tonnes, while a year ago it amounted to 18.3 million tonnes of timber, metal, oil products, fertilizers, construction materials etc. The highest decrease fell on oil products: in 2006, transportation of oil products declined over 2-fold, year-on-year - to 2.5 million tonnes against 5.5 million tonnes in 2005. Experts attribute the fall of cargo flows to technical state of internal waterways and to deficit of river-going vessels as well as to passage of vessels under St. Petersburg's draw bridges. The passage is limited by the draw schedule. Sometimes vessels have to wait for 5-6 days.

A competition for construction of St. Petersburg's Orlovski Tunnel, which was to link the two banks of the Neva river nearby Orlovskaya street and Piskaryovski prospect, was announced on 12 September 2007. According to experts, once the Orlovski Tunnel is put into operation the capacity of the Volga-Baltic canal will increase 1.2 times (or by 3 million tonnes of cargo) throughout navigation.