Since the beginning of the year, transportation of goods and passengers has been growing. Mikhail Glazkov, Deputy General Director of JSC Russian Railways and Head of the Central Traffic Management Directorate, talks about what technologies are used to handle such volumes.

Excessive fleet

– The network today has 1.3 million freight cars operated by 1,866 operators. How excessive is this fleet?  

– In recent years, the trend has continued for cars to enter the network at a rate significantly higher than the rate at which they are being taken out of service. As a result, the number of Russian-owned carriages reached a historical maximum. The imbalance in the availability of transportation resources, the work performed and the infrastructure capabilities for their placement, taking into account the technological purpose of each element of the infrastructure, led to negative dynamics of the main indicators that evaluate not only the quality and efficient use of freight cars, but also the quality of transportation in general. Compared to 2018, car turnover increased by 21%, downtime at one technical station - by 48%, downtime of a local car - by 22%, car productivity decreased by 13%, local speed - by 7%.

The Institute for Transport Economics and Development assessed the impact of an excess fleet of freight cars. At the end of September 2023, the surplus of the working fleet on the network exceeded 195 thousand cars, with the main share of it - more than 70% - located in particularly heavy freight directions: southwestern and eastern, as well as in places of mass loading within the boundaries of the West Siberian Railway. The result is an increase in costs, both for Russian Railways and cargo owners.

The full text of the article can be found on the website Gudok.