Ships have used the Northern Sea Route before, which is currently only accessible for a few months during the summer and fall. Commercializing the Northern Sea Route would reorient trade, said Elizabeth Buchanan, senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. First: The Northern Sea Route is comparatively short, taking around half the time as the journey south via the Suez Canal. “It’s not a question of ‘if,’ just a matter of ‘when.’”For now, the Northern Sea Route is a miniscule part of global trade. Whether the Northen Sea Route catches on depends on a tangle of factors.