A two-car train capable of carrying 182 passengers should be launched on the Kovel-Yagodin-Chelm route in late May or early June. The approximate travel time will be 2 hours and tickets will cost UAH 130-150.
The Lviv Railway’s head Ivan Hrunik announced this at a meeting at the Volyn regional administration on 20 April, the CFTS reports.
The rail bus will run daily. It is expected to depart from Kovel at 11:50. It is not expected to make stops at intermediate stations. As is the case with the Kyiv-Przemysl train, border control will be performed while the train is traveling.
To prevent smuggling, there will be video surveillance of passengers. Identified smugglers will be taken off the train at the Yagodin border checkpoint.
According to the regional administration, a meeting with representatives of the Polish side should be held in May, at which all issues will be agreed upon, after which a train between Kovel and Chelm will be launched. Extension of this railway route to Lublin also remains on the agenda.
As reported, this issue was discussed back in February this year. It was assumed that implementation of the project would be possible in summer 2017.
The board chairman of the Ukrainian Railways public joint-stock company (Ukrzaliznytsia), Wojciech Balczun, announced in February that a Pesa rail bus would be used on the route. This will be a Pesa bus. "We are currently doing everything to ensure that a Kovel-Chelm train begins operating on the route on 1 July. It will be a rail bus of the Pesa model. We expect our passengers to benefit in two ways: there are comfortable transfers to cities such as Warsaw, Lublin, Zamosc, and Rzeszow in Chelm. That is, it will be possible to reach all corners of Poland," Balczun wrote on his Facebook page in February.
He added that Ukrzaliznytsia is also considering plans to launch trains on the Lviv-Krakow route. "There is a good chance of seeing it in the timetable this summer," he said.
