A plan on restructuring of JSC Ukrzaliznytsia, which foresees division of the company into three operators (infrastructure, freight and passenger) and a production block, will be prepared by the end of 2019, Ukrzaliznytsia head Yevhen Kravtsov wrote on Facebook.
“We will fulfill the order of [President of Ukraine] Volodymyr Zelensky in time,” he said.
According to Kravtsov, a gradual plan would become a part of the implementation of the Ukrzaliznytsia’s strategy agreed with the Cabinet of Ministers and approved by the supervisory council in June 2019. After the plan is fulfilled and approved by the supervisory board, Ukrzaliznytsia will begin making certain steps under the control of the government, he added.
“[Infrastructure Minister] Vladyslav Krykliy, [Prime Minister] Oleksiy Honcharuk back European model. The main is that infrastructure remains under state regulation, when passenger and freight carriages are carried under the market conditions,” he said.
As reported, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has instructed the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine to prepare a plan on restructuring of JSC Ukrzaliznytsia by the end of 2019.
The president appointed Honcharuk and Krykliy responsible for the preparation of the plan.
PJSC Ukrzaliznytsia in the first half of 2019 repaired 45 electric trains and 18 diesel trains at their depots, while six electric trains and one diesel train were overhauled.
As a press service of the enterprise reported on Wednesday, by the end of 2019 the Ukrzaliznytsia is going to repair another 50 electric train sets and 15 diesel train sets.
As reported, Ukrzaliznytsia plans to launch a pilot project to upgrade commuter trains in Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions, asking Kyivpastrans to allocate UAH 500 million for their renewal.
Ukrzaliznytsia (Kyiv) has saved energy resources worth more than $6 million (UAH 165 million) since the beginning of 2019 thanks to the implementation of the energy and resource saving program for railway transport for 2019-2020 and the purchase of modern rolling stock.
According to the press service of the company, in particular, electricity consumption in the first quarter of 2019 was reduced by almost 30 million kWh, diesel fuel by about 4,000 tonnes, natural gas by more than 400,000 cubic meters.
“Thanks to the acquisition and commissioning of General Electric locomotives, over the five months some 1,970 tonnes of diesel fuel was saved, which reduced the cost of purchasing fuel by almost UAH 58 million. Thanks to the elimination of energy intensive train speed limits, 108 tonnes of diesel fuel worth UAH 3 million and 3,574 kWh of electricity worth almost UAH 7.2 million were saved,” Ukrzaliznytsia said.
In addition, according to the company, energy saving was also promoted by the work of traction energy laboratory wagons, which made 243 research trips.
Ukrzaliznytsia in the summer season daily transports around 141,000 passengers, which is over 20% more than this spring, the company has reported on its website.
“We are making every effort to provide passengers with the required number of seats in trains and proper service. For the period of peak summer traffic, 32 additional trains have been assigned. Thus, at present, 147 trains run daily in the country,” Ukrzaliznytsia Board Chairman Yevhen Kravtsov said.
At the same time, according to him, out of 2,864 cars involved in transportation, 1,304 are equipped with air conditioning systems.
“We also hope that this year the changes would be made to the budget, the state will allocate funds for the renewal of the passenger sector,” the head of Ukrzaliznytsia said.
Ukrzaliznytsia (Kyiv) has approved a concept of creating Station Company branch using a model of Germany’s Deutsche Bahn, Director for Strategic Development and Investment Policy at Ukrzaliznytsia Anton Sabolevsky has said in an interview with the Magistral news center.
He said that the implementation of the roadmap for the establishment of the branch will begin by the end of 2019.
“Our goal is to improve the station management system, to increase the efficiency of their activities, including by minimizing duplicate functions. The main goals include reducing financial costs,” Sabolevsky said.
At the same time, he recalled that the negative financial performance of the stations of the Passenger Company branch of JSC Ukrzaliznytsia in 2018 amounted to UAH 405 million.
The reorganization will take place in three stages. First, stations, which are now managed by the Passenger Company will be transferred to the new branch. Next, first-third class facilities of regional branches will be transferred in stages (in total, 106 stations at the first stage). Then the turn of fourth-fifth class facilities (around 1,200) will come. Subsequently, the flag stations will join them. There are almost 2,300 of them in Ukrzaliznytsia, Sabolevsky said, explaining the action plan for the near future.
According to him, the staff will also be transferred to the new branch.
JSC Ukrzaliznytsia has launched a new regular container train from the station Nyzhniodniprovsk-Vuzol station to Slawkow (Poland).
According to a report on Ukrzaliznytsia’s website, this train will collect containers from the Zaporizhia, Mariupol-Sortuvalny and Nikopol stations every Saturday.
“The direct container train, which follows a strict schedule without maneuvering operations on the way and with an accelerated border crossing technology, is a year-round all-weather alternative to road transportation,” Ukrzaliznytsia Head Yevhen Kravtsov commented on the launch of the train.
According to the state railway carrier, this is already the 19th container train, which will run on an ongoing basis, eight of which are transit trains.
“Now we are considering the possibility of organizing new container trains on the route Lithuania-Ukraine-Lithuania,” the expert said.
