The Ukrainian Railways public joint-stock company (Ukrzaliznytsia) plans to launch high-speed trains from the two major regional centers of Dnipro and Lviv to Odesa. Ukrzaliznytsia’s Board Chairman Wojciech Balczun announced this in a statement, the CFTS reports reports. However, he did not specify the date of launch of the trains.
"Considering the existing rolling stock and purchase of additional inter-regional dual-system electric trains by the UZShK (Ukrainian High-Speed Rail Company) subsidiary, we plan to link the regional industrial center of Dnipro with the Black Sea coast and the city of Odesa via high-speed rail in the future. This is particularly important for transportation of passengers during the summer holidays," Balczun said.
Balczun said that Lviv could be linked with Odessa via high-speed trains, using the existing rolling stock: "We plan to connect Lviv with Odesa by extending the existing Kyiv-Lviv route to Odesa and the Kyiv-Odesa route to Lviv along the Kyiv-Lviv-Odesa-Kyiv triangle," he said
Ukrzaliznytsia recently announced that the total occupancy rate of the Intercity+ and Intercity high-speed trains reached 92% in the first six months of 2017. According to the company, these trains transported a total of 2,432,000 passengers in the first half of 2017, which are 761,000 more than they transported in the corresponding period of last year.
The occupancy rate of the high-speed trains in Ukraine reached 84% in 2016, up from 68% in 2015. The high-speed trains performed more than 4,000 trips in 2016. The most popular destination was also Kharkiv (1.154 million passengers). They also transported 1.012 million passengers to and from Dnipro, 635,000 passengers to and from Lviv, and 378,000 passengers to and from Odesa.
