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Post by radovic on Oct 22, 2007 10:28:10 GMT -5
Minister Ilic claims for ‘Blic’ that situation in ‘Serbia Railways’ is disastrous Trains slower than in the 19th century Author: B. Bednar | 22.10.2007 - 06:13
More than a century ago, in 1888 there was an ‘Orient Express’ train running from Belgrade to Nis within 5 hours and 45 minutes at an average speed of 45.5 kilometers per hour. Today that distance is covered after more than 6 hours with an average speed of 44.7 kilometers per hour.
The Minister in charge Velimir Ilic admitted himself that the situation is bad and that on some railway tracks the allowed speed is up to 10 kilometers per hour. The Minister for infrastructure claims that the renewal of railway tracks is carried out in phases since there is no money. There are also tracks at which the traffic should have been suspended but was not done so because of the local autonomy. To remedy the complete situation it is necessary to renew about 4,000 kilometers of tracks and that requires 10 billion Euros, the Minister says. Serbia Railways cannot meet the needs of the population in the passenger traffic. The number of planned trains is not sufficient, the number of cancelled train is exceptionally high and train connections inadequate. In 2006 the number of cancelled trains was 30,000. The average delays were 7.5 minutes at each 100 of driving kilometers. As the main reason for slow speed, the officials mention safety of the passengers. In Serbia there are 3,808 kilometers of railways. In 429 kilometers (11 per cent) the average speed cannot exceed 30 km per hour.
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Post by radovic on Oct 22, 2007 10:29:24 GMT -5
Serbia should really try to get Hish Speed Trains?
To bad they're too expensive and our government is probably to incompetent to get them (they're even too incompetent to modernize the current trains).
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Post by zgembo on Oct 22, 2007 10:32:45 GMT -5
Incompetence? It costs 10 billion euros, what should they do? (sell the livers of every Serbian citizen)
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Post by radovic on Oct 22, 2007 10:39:58 GMT -5
Incompetence? It costs 10 billion euros, what should they do? (sell the livers of every Serbian citizen) It's 10 billion to modernize every single track. If they were smart they would get rid of all track that is economically unviable, that would cost significantly less then 10 billion euros. This idiots need to learn a lesson in free marfket economics. Or how about they do what the Swiss do, the Swiss have one of the best rail systems in the world and it is mostly privately run. Last time I checked the Serbian government wasn't privatizing the railways.
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Post by zgembo on Oct 22, 2007 12:09:41 GMT -5
Rail systems are incredibly expensive to create. I doubt any private company would have interest in making such a huge investment.
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Post by Marshall_Stanko on Oct 22, 2007 22:51:34 GMT -5
Hopefully something will be done and in time the railways will eventually get privatised. Maybe in the next 5 years or so.
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Post by radovic on Oct 24, 2007 10:17:57 GMT -5
Rail systems are incredibly expensive to create. I doubt any private company would have interest in making such a huge investment. Even then. By spending 3 billion euros on a high speed train system the government could build a rail system using either Japanese bullet trains, the bombardier Jet Train, or the TGV system. And such a rail system could go from Belgrade to the hungarian border, to the border with FYROM and to the border with Bulgaria. Not only that but given that their spped would be 4 to 6 times waster then the trains now it would decrease the cost of modernizing all track. This is how the project i mention would specifically look like:
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