Digital transformation in transport: development opportunities and risks of restricting competition

Abstract

Digital transformation affects all areas of the economy either implementing IT-technologies or just enjoying their spillovers. Compared to other transportation spheres, freight industry is a subject to significant competition effects. On the one hand, these effects stem from the fact that large operators can provide integrated services and carry out multimodal transportation and door-to-door delivery. On the other hand, some delivery companies tend to implement territory "zoning" strategies and specialize on the certain cargo type which may lead to cornering the market. Delivery companies in developed countries have already outperformed Russian ones in digital technologies implementation: their quality of railways and carriages, air transportation services and trucking logistics is much higher. The main obstacles of digital technologies implementation in cargo transportation industries include the need significant investments (which especially affects small companies' performance), lack of digital aspects in the industrial policy, lobbying of large cargo companies. Fast penetration of digital technologies also causes several competitive risks. There exists a tendency towards market consolidation which is especially important in terms of the emergence of large multimodal transport companies, who may exploit its dominant position to eliminate competition. Moreover, nowadays there exist several freight platforms entrusting transportation duties to the actual carrier companies by means of vehicle-cargo matching. The business model when a platform does not own freight transport is new phenomenon for the freight industry as well as for the regulators. That is why the regulators need to take into account new digital trends in freight industry and develop their own services for gathering reliable data to keep an ear to the ground in promoting competition in the transportation sphere.