One third of freight cars in Russia turned out to be redundant

The average speed of trains across the entire Russian Railways network has fallen by 2 km/h over the year - from 37.6 km/h in 2023 to 35.7 km/h by the end of 2024. The reason for this is more than 400,000 unused railcars, which are piled up on the tracks and slow down the delivery of goods, Russian Railways said. This is about a third of the company's entire fleet.

They especially hamper the movement along the limited directions, in particular along the Eastern polygon (Trans-Siberian and BAM), which has become the gateway to China.

"The constant build-up of the railcar fleet has led to the fact that we have 1.382 million railcars on public tracks," said Mikhail Glazkov, deputy general director of Russian Railways and head of the Central Directorate of Traffic Management.

According to the specialized Institute of Economics and Development of Railway Transportation, the current volume of cargo in the country requires a fleet of 970 thousand cars. Thus, over 400 thousand railcars are superfluous. 56% of the excess fleet are gondola cars for transportation of bulk mineral cargoes, primarily coal and ore.

As a result, the section speed (it characterizes the movement of trains between stations, taking into account stops and turnover of cars) on the Russian Railways network last year fell to 35.7 km/h, as it was in 1992, which naturally affects the economy of transportation. For comparison, it was 41.6 km/h in 2020 and 37.6 km/h in 2023.

Market participants note that the manufactured fleet of railcars became less in demand after the reorientation of logistics from west to east, and what to do with it is unclear.

Read more in Izvestia's exclusive article:

We have reached the end of the road: one third of freight cars in Russia turned out to be redundant