A multimodal, or mixed transportation, freight transit service has gone into operation, linking Wuhan in central China’s Hubei Province to Uzbekistan via Kyrgyzstan.

The train/truck operation offers a China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan (CKU) link in advance of the realisation of the multi-billion-dollar CKU railroad infrastructure on which construction started earlier this year. Completion of that megaproject is several years away.

The first international freight train set off along the CKU multimodal corridor just over a week ago. From Wuhan, it was to travel to Kashgar, in China’s western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. In Kashgar, the containers were to be transferred to trucks for completion of the cargo transportation, with a July 27 arrival in Tashkent targeted.

Proponents of the CKU multimodal and megaproject rail routes believe they will in future become serious rivals to Middle Corridor transit routes that run from China, through Kazakhstan and the South Caucasus and Turkey, to Europe, as they will significantly cut freight transportation times.

On July 22, News.Az International columnist Teymur Atayev noted in an article that looked at freight corridors running out of China that the Hubei-Central Asia route has seen a significant increase in usage in recent years. In 2021, he said, the first cargo train was launched from Wuhan to Almaty, Kazakhstan, and by spring this year, the Hubei-Central Asia services had evolved into regular freight routes, enabling a monthly throughput of 440 standard containers and over 7,500 tonnes of cargo.

In 2023, Hubei-origin cargo reached Uzbekistan by rail by taking the China-to-Europe-via-Central Asia rail route that goes through Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan’s northern neighbour. More recently, in May this year, a freight train journeyed from Tianjin Port—the largest port in northern China, located on the Bohai Sea—to Tashkent. It travelled via Khorgos, a hub on the Kazakhstan-China border.

In April, Azamat Sakiyev, general director of Kyrgyzstan’s state-owned railway operator Kyrgyz Temir Jolu, said that the CKU railroad is envisioned as integrated with Middle Corrior, or Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), transit corridors that run through Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Turkey and onward to Europe.