The Kharkiv-Vinnytsia route was the busiest high-speed train route in 2016. A Skoda double-decker train operates on this route, passing through Kyiv and Poltava. In total, there are 16 stations on the route, as a result of which the train’s load factor is 133%.
The Ukrainian Railways public joint-stock company (Ukrzaliznytsia) provided the relevant data to the CFTS portal.
According to Ukrzaliznytsia, the load factor of a train is calculated based on boarding/disembarkation at terminal and intermediate stations.
The second most popular route was the Kyiv-Krasnoarmiisk, where the load factor was 96% in 2016, compared with 80% in 2015. The Kyiv-Przemysl train, which was launched only in late December 2016, had a load factor of 92%.
The Kyiv-Kharkiv route was only the fourth busiest with a load factor of 89% (77% in 2016). Ukrzaliznytsia previously said that this was the most popular high-speed train route among passengers. In total, 1.154 million passengers were transported on this route in 2016.
In general, as previously reported, the load factor of high-speed trains in Ukraine increased by 16 percentage points to 84% in 2016, compared with 68% in 2015. Second-class carriages, which are traditionally more popular, had an average load factor of 91% in 2016 while first-class carriages had an average load factor of 67%.
