Baku, Azerbaijan, June 30
By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:
The reason for reducing the number of train routes between Azerbaijan and Russia is the decrease in the volume of passenger traffic, head of Russian Railways JSC Vladimir Yakunin told Trend.
He said that in 2014, the railway passenger transportation between Azerbaijan and Russia decreased by 22 percent compared with 2013.
"A little more than 201,000 passengers were transported in 2014," said Yakunin. "The same trend continued in 2015 as well. For the four months of 2015, passengers were transported by railway transport between Russia and Azerbaijan by 72 percent less than the same period in 2014."
He went on to add that given the 46 percent decline in transportation volumes in railway traffic with the CIS countries compared with 2013, starting from December 2014, international trains run with intervals, including such areas as Moscow-Baku (train No.95/96), Tyumen-Baku (No. 373/374), Rostov-Baku (No. 391/392).
"At the same time, passenger train No.373/374 runs on Tyumen-Makhachkala route starting from December 14, 2014," said the head of Russian Railways. "In order to keep the railway communication between the cities of Rostov and Baku, the train No.391/392 started to run once every four days starting from June 4, 2015."
Russian Railways JSC said earlier that it stopped implementing train routes in the directions of Moscow-Baku, Rostov-Baku and Tyumen-Baku starting from December 2014 due to economic inexpediency. Starting from Dec. 16, the implementation of Rostov-Baku train route has been stopped, Tyumen-Baku train route stopped since Dec. 18, and the passenger Moscow-Baku train route stopped since Dec. 20.
Edited by CN
---
Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov
