Rail transport in Russia runs on one of the biggest railway networks in the world. Russian railways are the third longest by length and third by volume of freight hauled, after the railways of the United States and China. In overall density of operations (freight ton-kilometers + passenger-kilometers)/length of track, Russia is second only to China. Rail transport in Russia has been described as one of the economic wonders of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.[1]
JSC Russian Railways has a near-monopoly on long-distance train travel in Russia, with a 98.6% market share in 2017.[2] Independent long-distance carriers include Grand Service Express TC, Tverskoy Express, TransClassService, Sakhalin Passenger Company, Kuzbass Suburb, and Yakutian Railway.[2]
Russia is larger than both the United States and China in terms of total land area, therefore its rail density (rail tracking/country area) is lower compared to those two countries. Since Russia's population density is also much lower than that of China and the United States, the Russian railways carry freight and passengers over very long distances, often through vast, nearly empty spaces. Coal and coke make up almost one-third of the freight traffic and have average hauls of around 1,500 kilometers, while ferrous metals make up another 10 percent of freight traffic and travel an average of over 1,900 kilometers. 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, behind only Canada, the United States, and Estonia in the ratio of freight ton-kilometers to passenger-kilometers. However, per head of population intercity passenger travel is far greater than the United States (which has the lowest long-distance passenger train usages in the developed world).
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 the Ministry of the Means of Communication until 2003, and Russian Railways since then – including the pooling and redistribution of revenues. This has been crucial to two long-standing policies of cross-subsidization: to passenger operations from freight revenues, and to 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.
Russian Railways accounts for 2.5%[3] of Russia's GDP and employs 800,000 people.[4] 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[5] and 1.3 billion tons of freight[6] 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).[7] 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, over 40% was double track or better.[8][9]
In 2013 railways carried nearly 90% of Russia's freight, excluding pipelines.[10][11]
Besides the common-carrier railways that are well covered by government statistics there are many industrial 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.[12][13] Currently (2008) they are only about half the length of the common-carrier system.[14] 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.[15] (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.
The SA3 coupler[16] (Soviet Automatic coupler, model 3) used in Russia has several advantages over the Janney coupler used in the United States.[17]
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.[18]
The majority of Russia's rail network uses the 1,520 mm Russian gauge, which includes all metro systems and the majority of tram networks in the country.
A section from the Poland–Russia bordertoKaliningrad, uses the 1,435 mm Standard gauge. Unlike the Sakhalin Railway, which carries freight and passengers, the standard-gauge line in Kaliningrad carries only freight at this time.
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, called ES EVM (the transliterated Russian acronym for "unified system of electronic computing machines").[19]
^филиппов 1981 pp. 18–14. Филиппов 1991 пп. 152-4 (in Russian); See also Шадур 1980, Chapt. X: Ударно-тяговые приборы (couplers and draft gears) (in Russian)
^George R. Cockle (editor) "Car and locomotive cyclopedia of American practices" (3rd edition), Simmons-Boardman Pub. Corp., New York, 1974. p. S8-1 (Section 8: Couplers). Note that the SA3 is a Willison type coupler.
^Костина, Н.А. +,『Предупреждение разрывов поездов』(Preventing trains from breaking in two) ЖТ 10-1988 pp. 41-2 (and another article from ЖТ -date unknown)
^IEEE Spectrum's special report: Winners & Losers VII: IBM overhauls Russian Railways' software infrastructure, p. 123
By Sandria Upson, Jan. 2010. Full text :[1]
Boublikoff, A.A. "A suggestion for railroad reform" in book: Buehler, E.C. (editor) "Government ownership of railroads", Annual debater's help book (vol. VI), New York, Noble and Noble, 1939; pp. 309–318. Original in journal "North American Review, vol. 237, pp. 346+. (Title is misleading. It's 90% about Russian railways.)
"Railroad Facts" (Yearbook) Association of American Railroads, Washington, DC (annual).
"Transportation in America", Statistical Analysis of Transportation in the United States (18th edition), with historical compendium 1939–1999, by Rosalyn A. Wilson, pub. by Eno Transportation Foundation Inc., Washington DC, 2001. See table: Domestic Intercity Ton-Miles by Mode, pp. 12–13.
UN (United Nations) Statistical Yearbook. The earlier editions were designated by date (such as 1985/86) but later editions use the edition number (such as 51st). After 1985/86 the "World railway traffic" table was dropped.After the 51st ? edition, the long table: "Railways: traffic" was dropped resulting in no more UN railway statistics.
Urba CE, "The railroad situation : a perspective on the present, past and future of the U.S. railroad industry". Washington : Dept. of Transportation, Federal Railroad Administration, Office of Policy and Program Development Govt. Print. Off., 1978.
VanWinke, Jenette and Zycher, Benjamin; "Future Soviet Investment in Transportation, Energy, and Environmental Protection" A Rand Note. The Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, 1992. Rand Soviet Transport
Westwood J.N, 2002 "Soviet Railways to Russian Railways" Palgrave Macmillan.
Ward, Christopher J., "Brezhnev's Folly: The Building of BAM and Late Soviet Socialism", University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009.
Плакс, А.В. & Пупынин, В.Н. Электрические железные дороги (Electric Railroads). Москва, Транспорт, 1993.
Резер, С.М. Взаимодействие транспортных систем. Москва, Наука, 1985.
Шадур, Л.А. (editor). Вагоны: конструкция, теория и расчёт (Railroad cars: construction, theory and calculations). Москва, Транспорт, 1980.
Фед = Федеральная служба государственной статистики (Federal government statistical service). Транспорт в России (Transportation in Russia) (annual) Available online.
Филиппов, М.М. (editor). Железные Дороги. Общий Курс (Railroads. General Course). Москва, Транспорт, 3rd ed. 1981. (4th ed. 1991 with new editor: Уздин, М.М.).
Шафиркин, Б.И. Единая Транспортная Система СССР и взаимодействие различных видов транспорта (Unified Transportation System of the USSR and interaction of various modes of transportation). Москва, Высшая школа, 1983.
Шадур. Л. А. (editor). Вагоны (Railway cars). Москва, Транспорт, 1980.
