The board chairman of the Ukrainian Railways public joint-stock company (Ukrzaliznytsia), Wojciech Balczun, has confirmed that the company plans to purchase four locomotive-pulled inter-regional high-speed trains, the Interfax Ukraine news agency reports.
According to Ukrzaliznytsia’s director of passenger transportation and services Ihor Romankiv, Ukrzaliznytsia plans to buy the trains with its own funds. "The financial plan for 2017 allocates UAH 550 million for purchase of these five-car trains," he said.
Balczun wrote on his Facebook page that the trains will be used for transporting passengers between Kyiv and Lviv via a new route passing through Vinnytsia-Khmelnytskyi-Ternopil, between Kyiv and Kharkiv, between Kyiv, Dnipro, and Zaporozhe (or Krasnoarmiisk), between Odesa and Dnipro (seasonal, summer), between Odesa and Lviv, and between Kyiv, Zaporizhia, and Melitopil.
In addition, Balczun said that high-speed trains have transported 12 million passengers since their launch in Ukraine five years ago and that the number of cities to which high-speed trains travel has doubled compared with the original number.
