DUSHANBE, July 8, 2009, Asia-Plus — Compared to H108 rail passenger traffic has fallen more than 15 percent in January-June 2009 and Tajikistan’s Railways has received more than 16 million somoni less than its due, Vladimir Sobkalov, the deputy head of Tajik Railways, remarked at a press conference in Dushanbe today.
“Over the first six months of this year, Tajik Railways has carried 331,200 passengers, which is 51,000 passengers fewer than in the same period of last year,” Sobkalov said, attributing decrease in the rail passenger traffic to decrease in the number of labor migrants traveling to Russia.
Besides, decision of Russian and Uzbek authorities to raise rail transit tariffs has also affected Tajikistan’s rail passenger traffic, according to Sobkalov. “We were forced to raise passenger fares on rail routes to Russia in the first quarter of this year,” said he, “We negotiated the issue of lowering the transit tariffs with Russian and Uzbek railways authorities and they met our halfway and lowered the tariffs by 25 percent that allowed us to lower passenger fares for long-distance trains by 300 somoni.”
Sobkalov also noted that decline in the passenger traffic had forced them to cancel some trips on international and domestic routes. “We have reduced quadruple-weekly service on the route to Moscow and trains now run to Moscow three times a week. We have also canceled third trip on the routes Kulob-Moscow and Khujand-Samara,” said Sobkalov, “Moreover, we were forced to cancel one trip on the route from Dushanbe to Khujand.”
At present Tajik Railways offers three routes to the Russian Federation (Dushanbe-Moscow (triple-weekly service), Kulob-Moscow (twice-weekly service), and Khujand-Saratov (twice-weekly service) and four domestic routes (Dushanbe-Konibodom (once-weekly service), Qurghon Teppa-Konibodom (once-weekly service), Dushanbe-Pakhtaobod (daily service) and Qurghon Teppa-Kulob (once-weekly service).
Tajikistan’s rolling-stock currently includes 1,910 cargo cars, 354 passenger carriages and 55 diesel locomotives.
The total length of rails in Tajikistan is more than 950 kilometers; of that, 680 kilometers are the main railways. At present there are 33 railway stations in the republic.
