The Russian railways are one of the economic wonders of the 19th, 20th, and 21st century world.[1] In length of track they are second globally to the railways of the United States. In volume of freight hauled, they are third behind the United States and China, using the standard measure of ton-kilometers. And in overall density of operations – here the standard measure is (freight ton-kilometers + passenger-kilometers)/length of track – Russia is second only to China.
Russia is a much larger country than either the United States or China, so its rail density (rail track/country area) is lower than that of these other two – much lower in the case of the United States. Since Russia's population density is also much lower than that of these other two (excluding Alaska from the U.S. measure in this case), the Russian railways carry their freight and passengers over very long distances, often through vast, nearly empty spaces; their average length of haul is second in the world, behind only the United States and essentially tied with Canada. Coal and coke make up almost one-third of the freight traffic and have average hauls of around 1500 kilometers, while ferrous metals make up another 10 percent of freight traffic and travel an average of over 1900 kilometers. Many remote shippers and customers have access either to only very poor alternative shipping options by road or water, and/or access to those alternative options for less than the entire year.
Though like most railways RZhD 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. Measured by the share of freight carried, RZhD is second to none among the world's largest railways in its importance to its country's economy.
The Russian 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. However, the regional railways are closely coordinated by the central authority – the Ministry of the Means of Communication, MPS, until 2003, and the Joint Stock Company Russian Railways, Rossiiskie Zheleznyie Dorogi or RZhD, 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 this 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 competitive sector; the latter focused on ambitious plans for equipment modernization and network expansion.
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Russian Railways accounts for 2.5% [2] of Russia's GDP. The percentage of freight and passenger traffic that goes by rail is unknown, since no statistics are available for private transportation such as private automobiles or company-owned trucks. In 2007, about 1.3 billion passengers [3] and 1.3 billion tons of freight [4] went via Russian Railways. In 2007 the company owned 19,700 goods and passenger locomotives, 24,200 passenger cars (carriages) (2007) and 526,900 freight cars (goods wagons) (2007).[5] A further 270,000 freight cars in Russia are privately owned (needs source).
In 2009 Russia had 128,000 kilometers of common-carrier railroad line, of which about half is electrified and carries most of the traffic, over 40% was double track or better.[6][7]
Besides the common-carrier railroads that are well covered by government statistics there are many industrial railways (such as mining or lumbering railroads) whose statistics are covered separately, and which in 1981 had a total length almost equal to the length of the common carrier railroads.[8][9] Currently (2008) they are only about half the length of the common-carrier system.[10] 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 railroad.[11] (For example, a lumber company uses its private industrial railroad to transport logs from a forest to its sawmill.) In 1981, there was 33.4 thousand kilometers of narrow gauge. About 4% of the industrial railroad traffic was on track jointly "owned" by two companies.
Russian railways were modernized mostly during the Soviet period and achieved world class hardware status.
The SA3 coupler [12] (Soviet Automatic coupler, model 3) used in Russia is more advanced than the Janney coupler used in the United States. Advantages of the Russian SA3 include: 1. It is always ready to couple, unlike the Janney coupler which requires that at least one of the couplers has its knuckle open.[13] 2. It has greater gathering range.
While the Russians may have the best designed coupler in the world,[14] there were problems with it breaking due to making it with lower quality steel, low quality of maintenance/repairs/rebuilding, and coupling cars at speeds higher than allowed by the rules.[15] The quality of steel was improved but other problems remained.
Railway universities prepare students for careers in various aspects of railroading. They were formerly known as: "railway colleges". During the Soviet period they were often known as "higher educational institutes" (for railroads) оr вуз (Russian), (an acronym ), and this designation is still in use. In 1967 (Soviet period) they had a total of 215,000 students enrolled, about half of which were correspondence students.[16] However, less than 7000 students graduated each year, mostly in engineering (such as electrical, mechanical, or civil engineering with emphasis on railroad applications).
Today (2010), about 20 years after the demise of the Soviet Union that founded many of these colleges, railway universities are still quite active. Two major railway universities in 2010 are in St. Petersburg and Moscow:
The Moscow "University claims to be the 5th largest university in the world in terms of the number of students (about 60,000). [17] This excludes correspondence students but might include students in the over 40 branches of the university in other cities and also might include students in the "technikum" (which is something like an advanced trade school) that merged into the university.[18] However only "17,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students" are claimed on the English part of the official university website:[19]
Other Railway Universities in Russia (with more precisely translated names like "Samara Government University of Railways") in 2010 are:
(The "Open Academy" is a correspondence school and is part of the Moscow Railway University: MIIT).
The above universities often have branches in other cities. Railway trade schools "technikumi" may have been taken in under the university umbrella. The above websites often include pictures of campuses, students, etc. For full access to the websites (which includes class assignments, etc.) one usually needs an account (including password) which only the students, etc. may obtain.
There are also ex-Soviet railway universities in other countries that once were part of the Soviet Union. For example, see
Russians today seem to be highly motivated to obtain a college education, even if the job prospects are not very good. It was thought by some that under capitalism, there would not be the surplus of college graduates that existed in the USSR. But it turns out that there is an even greater surplus today. [20]
Since 2010 the company 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 railroad's field operations, and integrate new automation software to help the railway strategize 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").[21]
The RZD operates the Armenian Railway until 2038. During this period, at least 570 million euro will be invested, 90% going into infrastructure.[22]
In North Korea the RZD participates in the upgrade of the Tumangang—Rajin line near the Sea of Japan and in the building of a container terminal in Rajin. [23]
Trans-Eurasia Logistics is a joint venture with RZD that operates container freight trains between Germany and China via Russia.
Joint ventures have been formed to build and operate a port in Rasŏn in North Korea, and rail links connecting that port to the Russian rail network at Khasan.[24]
Voltage of electrification systems not necessarily compatible.
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