ASTANA, Kazakhstan, November 21. Kazakhstan will purchase modern railroad cars to improve the quality of passenger transportation, said the Minister of Transport of Kazakhstan Marat Karabayev during a government meeting, Trend reports.
As the minister noted, currently, trains run between the regions of Kazakhstan on 66 routes. They are served by 13 carriers.
The fleet of passenger railroad cars is about 2,600. At times of peak load, there is a shortage of 300 railroad cars.
"To improve the quality of passenger transportation, work is underway to purchase new modern passenger railroad cars. This year, 162 units were purchased. Of these, 76 have been put into operation, 24 railroad cars will be delivered by the end of the year. And in the first half of next year, the remaining 62 railroad cars will be delivered," he said.
In addition, the minister pointed out that by 2029, it is planned to purchase 844 passenger railroad cars from domestic factories.
Over 11 million passengers were transported by trains of Passenger Transportation JSC (Kazakhstan Railways' subsidiary) from January through October 2023.
Thus, 2 million people were transported on the most popular routes: Karaganda to Almaty, and 2.5 million passengers were transported on the Astana to Shymkent to Almaty route.
The Atyrau-Aktau route carried around 500,000 passengers. Pavlodar-Kostanay, a route connecting two major cities in the country's north, serves around 590,000 people per year.
During the summer, passengers primarily use railway transportation. This summer, 4 million individuals were carried, accounting for 40 percent of all people transported.
