Repair works on 37% of the trunk railway lines in Ukraine are overdue.
Volodymyr Zhmak, the board chairman of the Ukrainian Railways joint-stock company (Ukrzaliznytsia), announced this at a press conference in Kyiv on Wednesday, the CFTS portal reports.
"The degree of wear of the infrastructure is significant. Repair works on 37% of the tracks in operation are overdue. The annual requirement is 2,000 kilometers. Because Since track facilities have been underfunded … since the establishment of JSC Ukrzaliznytsia, this has led to an increase in the length of tracks that have exhausted their service lives, which leads to speed reductions," Zhmak said.
However, according to him, speed-limit warnings on 2,800 kilometers of trunk tracks were removed in 2020 after the performance of repair work and such warnings were removed from a further 100 kilometers of tracks at the beginning of 2021.
Ukrzaliznytsia reconstructed only 112 kilometers of railway tracks and overhauled about 50 kilometers in 2020. It also performed light repair work on 1,200 kilometers of tracks.
As reported earlier, available data shows that 8,492 kilometers of railway tracks required reconstruction or overhaul as of the beginning of 2019. As previously stated by market participants, it is necessary to reconstruct or overhaul 1,400-1,800 kilometers of the superstructure of railway tracks annually to maintain Ukrzaliznytsia’s track facilities in a stable condition.
