this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
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268
Ukraine opens its first railway line with European track width standard, boosting the countryโ€™s integration with the European Union (enlargement.ec.europa.eu)
submitted 1 week ago by Sunshine@piefed.ca to c/buyeuropean@feddit.uk
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[โ€“] maam@feddit.uk 23 points 1 week ago

Ukraine is strengthening over time! ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ฆ

[โ€“] benjhm@sopuli.xyz 17 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Good, this means passengers can change in Uzhgorod - a nice town, instead of Chop which is just an isolated station with big gauge-changing sheds.
But it's only 22km. So next step, plan a more ambitious standard gauge connection, from Suceava (Romania) via Chernivtsi, Ternopil, Lutsk to Chelm (Poland) - this could be a really useful european N-S link, skirting around the Carpathian mountains. In parallel, for balance, plan a ukranian-gauge track to Gdansk on the Baltic, to facilitate freight exports, also maybe extend the existing ukranian-gauge track which already reaches from Hrubieszow to Katowice.

[โ€“] petrescatraian@libranet.de 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Suceava

For this, it means we'll have to build some new railways too, something which proved to be a mammoth task for all the politicians looking rather to burry our railway system instead of improving it (or it could be a boon for their plans to embezzle money, anything that works).

[โ€“] benjhm@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Seems to me a win-win scenario. Remember that Ukraine is actually remarkably good at railways - especially at manufacturing large numbers of comfortable and good-value sleeper wagons, which the rest of europe lacks, and also at maintaining their system in such adverse circumstances - their punctuality today is still much better than DB. On the other hand the track routes in Ukraine are anything but direct, dating from 19th century when capital cities were Petersburg and Vienna (so they align better N-S than E-W), so there's a lot of potential to make them straighter. The obstacles maybe rather regional mistrust - whether politicians in Suceava accept the status of Chernivtsi - a similar question as whether hungarians / slovakians accept Uzhhorod, polish Lutsk or Kovel,...? Better passenger transport links could help to build trust.

[โ€“] petrescatraian@libranet.de 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

@benjhm You mean having the Ukrainian companies do the work? Well, I am afraid that they will become "Romanian" once they cross the border. It's not about the reliability of railways once made, and not even the routes (these are good, only when they are actually completed). I'm talking about the bureaucracy.

Say the government finally wants to modernize a certain route. First, there is a feasibility study. Following a public tender, a company is declared a winner. Then the other company contests the result to the court. It takes a year for the court to give a verdict. Then the feasibility study is completed. If there is an allocation for the project in the next yearly budget, we can go on with the actual execution. If not, and the feasibility study expires (those do have an expiration date), we get back to step one. Almost all the time, some expropriation happens - i.e. people's properties get taken by the state in order to facilitate the construction. People get unhappy by the amount of money they receive as a compensation, so they sue the state. Compensations are settled, so now there can be a public tender for execution. Just like with the feasibility study thing, the loser goes to the court in the hopes the result is changed. I forgot to mention that if the complainer is right, then the tender starts all over.

Alright, execution happens. The winner works according to the amount of money is paid (of course) by the government. Which, as the railways get 12 times less money than highways, is also low. So construction goes with 0.something% every month. There's a website called Club Feroviar which does a monthly monitoring of the constructions for each construction site. Here's the table for the month of July.

As history was pretty unforgiving with us (we lived in a place where empires clashed), it's also highly inevitable that we find some historical relics. So the work stops, the archaeologists come (another field which is poorly financed) and they have to discharge the location.

And so, railway works for one single lot take 5 years, 7 years and so on...

[โ€“] benjhm@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I guess you are right about building railways in Romania, for example I remember a train crossing the (then) shiny new EU-funded rail bridge across the Danube from Vidin, then continuing at a walking pace towards Craiova. However, where i lived near Ottignies in Belgium it was no better - they demolished houses, build tunnels and bridges, then postponed laying the rail track for over a decade. As for projects getting delayed and costs inflated by archaeological digs - check out tunnels in London... And don't get lemmings (?) started on DB infrastructure... Maybe the emergency situation in Ukraine, oddly helps them to get some things moving faster ?

[โ€“] petrescatraian@libranet.de 2 points 1 week ago

@benjhm that railway was not modernized afaik. Only the bridge was new.

The network is still in poor condition and needs a massive overhaul in order to be relevant. Indeed, maybe the security risk posed by Russia will get things going.

[โ€“] benjhm@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 week ago

Another trans-european link I should have mentioned for longer term planning - considering that Lukashenka won't be in the way forever, is a ukrainian-gauge line from Riga to Odesa - reviving already existing connections (and to balance that - a polish gauge line Bialystok - Grodno - Vilnius , complementing rail baltica).

[โ€“] Tuuktuuk@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This is the second one, actually. Hungarian trains started serving Mukachevo already years ago.

[โ€“] benjhm@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Ah yes, I see it on openrailwaymap, which also indicates mixed gauge all the way along the Tisza valley to Vinohradiv, also a ukranian gauge line from Uzhhorod to Kosice - are these still operating ?

[โ€“] Tuuktuuk@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 week ago

I would guess Mร€V stopped sending its wagons beyond the border of Ukraine in February '22, and Ukraine doesn't have 1435 mm wagons it could.apare for that traffic, so probably the Hungarian trains don't currently serve Mukachevo.

The two broad gauge routes โ€“ to Poland and Slovakia โ€“ have been constantly in use all the time from Soviet times, and are still in use. A passenger traffic on the broad gauge line to Poland, at least to Hrebenne, was opened for evacuations in March 2022, IIRC, and the route remained in use after that.