| Russia | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | |||||
 | |||||
| Operation | |||||
| Major operators | Russian Railways | ||||
| Statistics | |||||
| Ridership | 570,80 million passenger trips (2023)[1] | ||||
| Passenger km | 56 billion passenger-kilometers (2023)[1] | ||||
| Freight | 619 million tons (2023)[1] | ||||
| System length | |||||
| Total | 122,000 km (75,800 mi) | ||||
| Electrified | 44,100 km (27,400 mi) | ||||
| Track gauge | |||||
| Main | 1,520 mm (4 ft 11+27⁄32 in) | ||||
| Features | |||||
| No. stations | 13,000 (2023) | ||||
| |||||
Rail transport in Russia runs on one of thelargest railway networks in the world. By both volume of freight hauled, and passenger volume, they are second to onlyChina. In total length, they are third largest[2][needs update], after China and the United States. Rail transport in Russia has been described as one of the economic wonders of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.
JSCRussian Railways has a near-monopoly on long-distance train travel in Russia, with a 98.6% market share in 2017.[3] Independent long-distance carriers include Grand Service Express TC, Tverskoy Express, TransClassService, Sakhalin Passenger Company, Kuzbass Suburb, andYakutian Railway.[3]
Russia is a large country, covering parts ofEurope andAsia. In terms of total land area, it is larger than both theUnited States andChina. Therefore, its rail density (rail tracking/country area) is lower compared to those two countries. Since Russia'spopulation density is also much lower than that of China and the United States, the Russian railways carryfreight andpassengers over very long distances, often through vast, nearly barren land.Coal andcoke make up almost one-third of the freight traffic and have average hauls of around 1,500 kilometres (930 mi), while ferrous metals make up another 10% of freight traffic and travel an average of over 1,900 kilometres (1,200 mi). Railroads are often key to getting supplies shipped to remote parts of the country as many people do not have access to other reliable means of shipping.
Like most railways, rail transport in Russia carries both freight and passengers. It is one of the most freight-dominant railways in the world (after onlyCanada, theUnited States, andEstonia) in the ratio of freight ton-kilometers topassenger-kilometers. However, per head of population, intercity passenger travel is far greater than the United States (which has the lowest long-distance passenger train usage in the developed world).
Russia's active railway network is 105,000 km (65,000 mi) long, of which 54,054 km (33,588 mi), or 51.48%, areelectrified.[4] It has the3rd longest railway network in the world after the United States and China. Russia has the largestEuropean railway network, followed byGermany andFrance.[5]
Russia's railways are divided into seventeen regional railways, from the October Railway serving the St. Petersburg region to the Far Eastern Railway serving Vladivostok, with the free-standing Kaliningrad and Sakhalin Railways on either end. The regional railways were closely coordinated by theMinistry of the Means of Communication until 2003, andRussian Railways since then, coordination including the pooling and redistribution of revenues. This coordination has been crucial to two long-standing policies of cross-subsidization: 1) passenger operations from freight revenues and 2) coal shipments from other freight.
The Russian railways were a collection of mostly privately owned and operated companies during most of the 19th century, though many had been constructed with heavy government involvement and financing. The tsarist government began mobilizing and nationalizing the rail system as World War I approached, and the new communist government finished the nationalization process. With the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, the Russian Federation was left with three-fifths of the railway track of the Union as well as nine-tenths of the highway mileage. though only two-fifths of the port capacity.
In the 21st century, substantial changes in the Russian railways have been discussed and implemented in the context of two government reform documents: Decree No. 384 of 18 May 2001 of the Government of the Russian Federation, "A Program for Structural Reform of Railway Transport", and Order No. 877 of 17 June 2008 of the Government of the Russian Federation, "The Strategy for Railway Development in the Russian Federation to 2030". The former focused on restructuring the railways from government-owned monopoly to private competitive sector; the latter focused on ambitious plans for equipment modernization and network expansion.
1837 – theTsarskoye Selo Railway (27 km);
1843 – Inkerman Railway (about one km);
1848 – theWarsaw-Vienna Railway (800 km);
1851 –Nikolaevskaya railway (645 km);
1854 —Connecting Line (4,73 km), first trans-line connector to form the future network;
1855 – The Balaklava Railway (about 23 km);
1861 – theRiga-Dinaburg railway (218 km);
1862 – theSaint Petersburg–Warsaw Railway (1116 km);
1862 – theMoscow-Nizhny Novgorod railway (437 km);
1868 –Moscow-Kursk railway (543 km);
1870 –Yaroslavl Railway;
1878 – theUral Mining and Railroads (by 1880–715 km);
1884 – Catherine (Krivorog (g)) railway) (by 1884–523 km);
1890 –Samara-Zlatoust railway (1888 – Samara-Ufa, by 1893 about 1500 km);
1898 – thePerm-Kotlas railway;
1900 – TheUssuri railway (964 km);
1900 – the Moscow-Savyolovo line;
1903 – theSino-Eastern Railway (Manchurian, Chinese Changchun, Harbin);
1905 –Trans-Baikal Railway; TheCircum-Baikal Railway; Petersburg-Vologda railway;
1906 – Theological Railway; The Tashkent railway;
1908 –Little Ring of the Moscow Railway;
1915 – the Altai Railway;
1916 – theAmur Railway; The Volga-Bugulma Railway;West-Ural railway; TheMoscow-Kazan railway; North-Eastern Ural Railway; TheTrans-Siberian Railway (historical part);
1926 – the Achinsk-Minusinsk railway;
1930 – theTurkestan-Siberian Railway;
1936 – 1937 –Norilsk Railway;
1940 – Kanash–Cheboksary;
1944 – The Big Ring of the Moscow Railway;
1969 – the line of Verbilki–Dubna;
1978 – Rostov-Krasnodar–Tuapse; Yurovsky–Anapa;
2003 – theBaikal–Amur Mainline;
2013 – Adler–Rosa Farm;
2016 –Moscow Central Circle (based onLittle Ring of the Moscow Railway);
2017 – Therailway line bypassing Ukraine;
2017 – theAmur–Yakutsk railway;
2019 – Railwaybridge to the Crimea;
Russian Railways accounts for 2.5%[6] of Russia'sGDP and employs 800,000 people.[7] The percentage of passenger traffic that goes by rail is unknown, since no statistics are available for private transportation such as private automobiles. In 2007, about 1.3 billion passengers[8] and 1.3 billion tons of freight[9] went via Russian Railways. In 2007 the company owned 19,700[citation needed] goods and passenger locomotives, 24,200 passenger cars (carriages) (2007) and 526,900 freight cars (goods wagons) (2007).[10] A further 270,000 freight cars in Russia are privately owned[citation needed].
In 2009 Russia had 128,000 kilometers of common-carrier railway line (of which about half is electrified and carries most of the traffic), and over 40% was double track or better.[11][12]
In 2013 railways carried nearly 90% of Russia's freight, excluding pipelines.[13][14]
Besides the common-carrier railways that are well covered by government statistics there are manyindustrial railways (such as mining or lumbering railways) whose statistics are covered separately, and which in 1981 had a total length almost equal to the length of the common carrier railways.[15][16] Currently (2008) they are only about half the length of the common-carrier system.[17] In 1980, about two-thirds of their freight flowed to and from the common-carrier railroads while the remaining third was internal transport only on an industrial railways.[18] (For example, a lumber company uses its private industrial railways to transport logs from a forest to its sawmill.) About 4% of the industrial railway traffic was on track jointly "owned" by two companies.
In 1981, there were 33,400 kilometers of narrow gauge.
TheSA3 coupler[19] (Soviet Automatic coupler, model 3) used in Russia has several advantages over theJanney coupler used in the United States.[20]
The SA3 coupler, while well-designed, has had problems with operating due to being made with lower quality steel, having a low quality of maintenance/repairs/rebuilding, and coupling cars at speeds higher than allowed by the rules.[21]
The majority of Russia's rail network uses the 1,520 mmRussian gauge, which includes all metro systems and the majority of tram networks in the country.
TheSakhalin Railway, onSakhalin Island used 1,067 mmCape gauge from its construction under Japan until 2019, when the conversion to 1520 mm completed.
A section from thePoland–Russia border toKaliningrad, uses the 1,435 mmStandard gauge. Unlike the Sakhalin Railway, which carries freight and passengers, the standard-gauge line in Kaliningrad carries only freight at this time.
Kaliningrad's tram network also usesmetre-gauge tracks at 1,000 mm, as doesStavropol krai's Pyatigorsk network.
There are many railway colleges in Russia which are higher educational institutes that train students for railway careers, mainly in engineering.
Since 2010 Russian Railways had started an overhaul of its computer systems. The overhaul will centralize the management of data into new computing hubs, restructure the collection of information on the railway's field operations, and integrate new automation software to help the railway strategise how to deploy its assets. The geriatric machines that the new mainframes will replace include Soviet-built clones of IBM's Cold War–era computers, calledES EVM (the transliterated Russian acronym for "unified system of electronic computing machines").[22]
The RZD operates theArmenian Railway until 2038. During this period, at least 570 million euro will be invested, 90% going into infrastructure.[23]
Joint ventures have been formed to build and operate a port inRasŏn inNorth Korea, and rail links connecting that port to the Russian rail network at theNorth Korea–Russia borderKhasan-Tumangang.[24]
Trans-Eurasia Logistics is ajoint venture withRZD that operatescontainerfreight trains betweenGermany andChina viaRussia.
Voltage ofelectrification systems not necessarily compatible.
