The Board of OJSC Russian Railways came together for its final meeting of the year in Moscow on 12 December 2018. During the meeting, Dmitry Pegov, the Deputy Managing Director General of OJSC Russian Railways, summed up the preliminary results of passenger traffic on the Russian rail network.
By the end of the year, more than 1.152 billion passengers will have been transported, an increase of 3.1% compared to 2017. This is the highest figure in the last 10 years and includes more than 110.1 million long-distance passengers, up 7.7%, while suburban commuters and passengers amounted to than 1.042 billion passengers, a rise of 2.7%. Compared to the level of last year, long-distance passenger turnover was up by 5.5% and suburban passenger turnover increased by 3.4%, said Dmitry Pegov.
According to Dmitry Pegov, the Company achieved these impressive results by developing new transport products and introducing innovative rolling stock, as well as by improving the quality of passenger service. Thus, the growth in passenger numbers travelling on daily express trains in 2018 will be 23% up on 2017, double-decker trains will see an increase of 37%, Sapsan train passengers will have increased by 4.2%, Lastochka passengers on long-distance services by about 50% and suburban passengers by 31%. The number of passengers on the Moscow Central Ring will have increased by 15%.
“The suburban intra-urban passenger segment is in demand and undergoing rapid development,” said the Deputy Managing Director of Russian Railways. In addition to Moscow, city electric trains are now being launched in another 10 Russian cities: Krasnoyarsk, Yekaterinburg, Ufa, Tambov, Rostov-on-Don, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Voronezh, Yaroslavl and Kazan. According to the long-term development programme down to 2025, the project is planned to roll out in another 7 cities.
In 2019, Krasnoyarsk will host the XXIX World Winter Universiade, the largest multi-sport winter university competition in the world. Russian Railways plans to lay on 21 daily runs on 6 intracity routes for the entire period of the Universiade.
Russian Railways now also offers passengers multimodal transportation, with 99 routes already operating at 11 suburban passenger companies. Work is continuing to expand the reach and coverage of multimodal routes.
The Company’s renewal of the rolling stock fleet and its improvement of its passenger appeal, in the opinion of Dmitry Pegov, is one of the important indicators for achieving increasing travel comfort for passengers.
The number of carriages equipped with bio-toilets, air conditioners, video surveillance systems and additional power supplies etc. has increased.
Dmitry Pegov also noted that in 2018, for the first time since the First Passenger Company was established, the number of carriages renewed exceeded 1,300 passenger cars.
In 2018, the Russian Railways Holding invested 41.9 billion roubles in upgrading its fleet of long-distance passenger cars, purchasing 736 carriages, including 637 second-class carriages, and modernising 584 carriages. New carriages came into service on trains connecting Moscow and St. Petersburg with Izhevsk, Adler, Anapa, Vladivostok, Ivanovo, Yoshkar-Ola, Murmansk, Orenburg, Orsk, Rostov-on-Don, Severobaikalsky, Tyumen, Ulyanovsk, Cherepovets and Chita. New carriages also entered service on a number of interregional routes, such as Nizhny Novgorod – Adler, Tynda – Kislovodsk and Krasnoyarsk – Anapa.
In addition, Russian Railways invested a significant amount of about 27 billion roubles in the current year to upgrade (purchase and modernise) the suburban train fleet, acquiring 180 carriages to make up 35 trains powered by the Lastochka engine, and 130 carriages for 30 new formations pulled by EP3D electric locomotives.
The procurement of suburban rolling stock in 2018 will meet in full the orders from the subjects of the Russian Federation for suburban transportation in view of their plans for public transportation services.
