The ferry service Klaipeda - Mukran (now Sassnitz) connected the ports of the USSR and the GDR through the Baltic Sea.
In the USSR, the exchange of goods with the countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) constantly increased. Calculations have shown that it is economically more profitable to redirect part of the goods going to the GDR through the port - six times cheaper than on the railways of Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic republics and Poland. It was assumed that the port will take over more than 5 million tons of transit traffic to the GDR. In this regard, it was planned to build a ferry crossing. It was included in the "Main directions of economic and social development of the USSR for 1986 - 1990 and for the period up to 2000".
In the 1980s, Lengiprotrans developed a route scheme for Klaipeda port, which significantly accelerates the loading and unloading of ferries with direct rolling and rolling of carriages along two tiers of bridges with parallel operation of two locomotives.
