Duplicated inspections lead to longer lorry queues on Russian border
Documents of single vehicle can be inspected on Russian side up to 52 times
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The duplication of various inspections by Russian officials, combined with poor transport arrangements, are the main causes of the continued backlogs of lorries on the Finnish-Russian border.
In a test run by the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications, a Finnish truck had to deal with up to eight different border officials, compared with just three on the Finnish side. The documentation of a single truck is handled five times on the Finnish side and up to 52 times in Russia.
The fresh study by the Ministry of Transport and Communications is the most thorough assessment of the problem of road transport backlogs on the border.
A ministry researcher, who travelled in a truck as an assistant driver, calculated the time that the various inspections took. The vehicles were also tracked by a GPS positioning device.
Crossing the border took an average seven and a half hours.
"That is far too long. It should go much quicker than that", says Tommi Kivilaakso, head of the Eastern Customs District.
The countries on the Baltic Sea have agreed on a target of a maximum of two hours for crossing the border. Only one truck in 12 in the study achieved this goal. The longest waiting time was more than 16 hours.
Most of the waiting time was spent in a queue waiting for the Russian officials to begin their inspections.
Lassi Hilska of the Ministry of Transport and Communications, says that Russian border officials are not significantly slower in their inspections than their Finnish colleagues. He says that the cause of the backlogs are the duplication and complicated nature of the inspections when crossing from Finland into Russia.
For instance, a driver's inspection card had to be shown eight times on the Russian side.
Coming from Russia to Finland, everything went much more smoothly, but not as quickly as on the Finnish side.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 25.11.2005 - TODAY |
 Duplicated inspections lead to longer lorry queues on Russian border |
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