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Read the Russian piece. It's interesting.
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RAILNews JUNE 11,1998 SECTION "B" [2 of 4]
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>WORLD RAILNews:
================
German ICE train makes emergency stop
Jun 10, 1998
Reuters
FRANKFURT
An express train of the type involved in modern
Germany's worst train accident made an
emergency stop in Germany on Wednesday and
250 shaken passengers transferred to other
trains, German Railways said.
The Intercity Express (ICE) Train from
Munich bound for Hamburg stopped in the
northern town of Celle, a German Railways
spokesman said.
The train driver heard strange noises and
made the emergency stop. After passengers
continued their journeys on other
transport, the train was taken to a
Hamburg workshop for checks.
No damage was established, he said.
A week ago an ICE train derailed and
crashed into a bridge in the northern town
of Eshede, not far from Celle and 95
people were killed and dozens were
injured.
Railway officials have said the cause of
the crash may have been a damaged wheel
and withdrew all first generation ICE
trains, like the one that crashed, from
service for special checks.
A similar incident took place on Saturday,
when an ICE train carrying passengers from
Vienna to Hamburg made an emergency stop
in south-western Germany after the driver
heard strange noises. German Railways said
checks showed no damage.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THE HINDU
Wednesday, June 10, 1998
Three trains renamed
NEW DELHI
The Railways had decided to rename three important
trains by adding names of those States or Union
Territories, whose names do not figure in the map of the
railways.
Announcing the new names while replying to the
discussion on the Railway Budget in the Lok Sabha, the
Railway Minister, Mr. Nitish Kumar, said three train
names had been changed keeping the sentiments of the
people in mind.
He said the Hazrat Nizamuddin-Cochin Mangala Express had
been renamed as Mangala Lakshadweep Express; the New
Delhi- New Jalpaiguri Mahananda Express would be called
Mahananda Sikkim Express. Likewise, the Jammu
Tawi-Chennai Express had been renamed as Andaman
Express.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Times of India
Thursday 11 June 1998
Derailment disrupts rail traffic
SONEPAT: Rail traffic on the Sonepat-Delhi
section remained disrupted for the second day on
Wednesday following the derailment of a goods
train at Bodhwal Majri station, 25 km from here
on Tuesday.
Thousands of passengers, including those waiting
to travel by long distance trains, and daily
commuters to Delhi, were stranded at railway
stations owing to the cancellation of several
trains.
No train, including superfast and summer
specials, barring the Kalka-bound Shatabdi
Express, could pass through Sonepat after the
derailment.
Several trains bound for Jammu, Amritsar and
other destinations in the north were either
cancelled or diverted to Ambala-Saharanpur-Delhi
route, causing inconvenience to passengers.
The RMS could not dispatch mail bags in the
absence of trains on the section.
The absence of trains also put pressure on the
Haryana Roadways buses but the roadways tried to
meet the situation by introducing additional
buses on some routes.
The misery of the commuters at various railway
stations was compounded by absence of water on
the platforms.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Los Angeles Times
Wednesday, June 10, 1998
Russia's Rails on New Track
The huge, dysfunctional train system poses daunting
challenges for economic reformers. Privatization could
serve as a blueprint for transforming the rest of what the
government calls its 'natural monopolies.'
IRKUTSK, Russia--There's a lesson to be learned from the
controlled chaos that breaks out in the restaurant car
whenever the train screeches to a halt in some remote wayside on
the Trans-Siberian Railroad.
The cook, the waitress, the manager and the busboy leap into
action from the little-patronized dining section, hurling cartons
and packing crates to waiting customers at trackside. Goods are
taken on, cash changes hands, and the black-market deliveries are
toasted with comradely gulps of vodka, all cleanly executed within
the two-minute stopping time.
By contrast, the railroad's freight yards are scenes of sloth
and dysfunction. Increasingly, businesses are limiting their rail
cargo to automobiles, lumber and other shipments too bulky to be
delivered by air because it can take weeks for indolent federal
cargo handlers to unload containers.
The lesson, as the freelance capitalists in the dining car
long ago realized--and the federal government in Moscow is now
heeding--is that competition fosters better service, higher income
and personal incentive.
Russia's oft-thwarted reformers are now trying to impart that
free-market credo to the masses, having undertaken the herculean
labors of transforming bloated transport and utility monopolies
into more efficient and competitive public services.
Starting with the rail network that links the far-flung
regions of this unwieldy country, those managing the economic
transition are quietly spreading the word that the 1.5 million men
and women working on the railroad will keep their jobs only if
they learn to do them better.
"Monopolies have become sources of stagnation in this
country," First Deputy Prime Minister Boris Y. Nemtsov observed
when he was put in charge of the colossal reform project a year
ago. "They hamper development of potentially competitive sectors
and are hotbeds of corruption."
Huge subsidies are needed to keep trains rolling and energy
flowing, and Nemtsov has warned that the noncompetitive public
services could eat up one-third of Russia's budget by 2000.
But how to avert bankruptcy without leaving Russians stranded
in the cold and dark is a quandary worrying both the anti-monopoly
activists and those Russians who have come to equate reform with
destruction.
Passenger and freight trains may operate at staggering
losses, but the 56,000 miles of track are the country's
circulation system. Built to move the precious metals and minerals
mined by convict labor, the railroads are the only integrated
transport network functioning in Russia, which remains without a
highway system and is only spottily served by fledgling private
airlines.
"The country is virtually held together by the railroads,"
said Mikhail G. Delyagin, an economic advisor to Nemtsov. "But the
whole system is threatened by antiquated management. As shipping
and passenger volumes have dropped, prices have been raised to
make up for the shortfall, which makes rail transport all the less
attractive for the consumer."
State subsidies have long carried the railroads, but in the
leaner and meaner reality of capitalism, the network has been
ordered to shape up so that it can pay its own way by 2005.
Transforming 'Natural Monopolies'
If the reformers succeed, against all odds, their formula for
dismantling the federal rail behemoth into more functional and
competing regional networks could become the blueprint for
transforming the rest of what the government calls its "natural
monopolies."
From the Unified Energy Systems electricity grid to the
Gazprom natural gas empire, the monopolies beggaring state coffers
and consumers alike are remnants of the Soviet era, when public
works were designed on the principle that bigger was inherently
better.
Russia's economic architects already have succeeded in
breaking up the air transport monopoly, Aeroflot, into more than
300 independent domestic carriers--albeit with a stunning erosion
of safety.
But travelers and shippers doubt that even token change will
result from the newly launched railroads project because the
legions of Railroad Ministry employees are fighting the effort
with self-interested vigor. Those familiar with America's Amtrak
also have a convenient counter-argument to point to, noting that
even the wealthiest country in the world has to subsidize its rail
service despite more than a quarter-century of attempts to make it
independent.
The entrenched bureaucracies managing other transport and
energy systems are likewise resistant to pending changes, fearing
that the hot breath of private competition will undermine the
security of their jobs.
And the opponents are gaining ground with the public by
warning that anti-monopoly activists are replicating the
destruction of the Soviet Union by dismantling its functioning, if
flawed, infrastructure before anything better is built in its
place.
"It will never happen," Alexander I. Kasyanov, deputy chief
of the eastern Siberian department of the sprawling railroad,
insisted from an office still under the glare of Soviet founder
Vladimir I. Lenin's portrait. "This reform is just an idea someone
had in Moscow, to look at how things could be restructured over
the next five years. But a lot can change in this country by
then."
While breaking up the monopolies is Nemtsov's pet project, it
is also his millstone. The charismatic 38-year-old is seen as a
promising candidate to run for President Boris N. Yeltsin's job in
2000 and his fate probably hinges on what might be the reform
era's tallest order.
The railroad restructuring has already begun with a decision
in March that peripheral property, activities and services be spun
off. As was the case with most Soviet operations, the railroad
owned everything from workers housing to hospitals to summer
recreation lands, as well as all factories producing track,
wagons, locomotives and even customized teacups for use in
passenger compartments.
Some of the properties, such as schools and hospitals, have
been deeded to municipal authorities in the towns and cities where
they are located, and housing has been "privatized" by giving it
to existing tenants.
"The second phase of the reform is more difficult. It
involves dividing the railroad's activities into a competitive
sector and infrastructure," said Oleg A. Moshenko, deputy
railroads minister. "We still haven't drawn the line between what
is best produced by the state and what could be converted to
private enterprise."
Private firms offering cargo handling, delivery, food
service, cleaning or maintenance are expected to take shape and
bid for the railroad business, renting use of the rails, wagons
and other infrastructure from the state, Moshenko said.
Although passenger traffic on the rail system has fallen to a
third of its Soviet-era volume, the trains still carried 1.5
billion passengers last year--an average of more than 10 trips for
each of Russia's 148 million citizens. And for every passenger
wagon rolling along the rails, two freight cars are in motion,
even if they are often underutilized. Nearly 78% of all cargo
moved within Russia was carried by rail last year, said ministry
press service editor Lyudmila Yangel.
But to keep the trains running, the government this year has
budgeted $75 million in direct subsidies and millions more to prop
up other consumer services, such as fuel and electricity, used by
the railroad network but not paid for in full or on time.
Passenger traffic is down primarily because hard times have
meant Russians have less money to travel, but with the price of a
rail ticket now twice what it would cost to fly the same distance
on some of the newly competitive airlines, those running the
railroads realize their passenger volumes are unlikely to ever
make a comeback.
Shippers too have demonstrated a sharp preference for sea or
air transport, which has caused a substantial drop in cargo
volume. Figures for freight carriage are unreliable, Yangel said,
because Russia's customs union with its Baltic exclave of
Kaliningrad and neighboring Belarus allow much of the volume to be
registered elsewhere. But the number of freight trains has been
halved since 1992, and container cars on average carry only 30% of
capacity, Yangel said.
Railroad employees note that encouraging the emergence of
competitive companies will take more than government edicts. A
growth in cargo volume is needed, as well as more cost-effective
handling, and there is little expectation that an industrial
production boom is on the horizon.
The ministry has embarked on a sales campaign with Russia's
Asian neighbors, touting the Trans-Siberian's nine-day trip for
freight from the Pacific coast to the Belarussian city of Brest,
which is a gateway to Western Europe. That compares, the officials
contend, with a 36-day sea journey and offers a 20% saving.
'I Never Send by Railroads Anymore'
Those pitches so far have made few inroads with Asian
shippers, and two out of three container carriages roll along
empty. At the Batareinaya freight yard just outside this key
junction on the Trans-Siberian, which handles all cargo destined
for eastern Siberia, vast open spaces yawn with stillness, broken
only by rusting overhead cranes and a few auto-laden wagons
waiting to be unloaded.
"I never send anything by the railroads anymore. I've learned
my lesson," said Alexei Aksyutin, head of the Irkutsk-Press
newspaper and magazine distribution service.
Aksyutin stopped using the railroad only weeks after he
started his private business in 1993 because the paperwork was
pointlessly voluminous and time-consuming and deliveries too
unreliable for his time-sensitive products.
"You can't even complain to anyone. The railroad is such an
unapproachable monolith that customers who make their
dissatisfaction known are treated like troublemakers and their
goods are held up even longer," he said.
In the workers settlement next to the Batareinaya freight
yard, the despair of a dying company town was already in the air
despite widespread ignorance about details of the reform plans.
Squat brick housing blocks were surrounded by stray dogs,
smoldering dumpsters and dust clouds that had been churned up on
the unpaved roads that lead to the freight yard.
Residents had heard little to nothing about the planned
streamlining that probably threatens many of their jobs. Some
shrugged off the risk of being aced out by competition as a blow
they've been expecting.
"What do we need a railroad here for anyway? There's no
industry working, not even the lumber mill," said Nadya
Korovyakina, a 39-year-old grocery store clerk whose husband works
at the freight yard.
Others echoed the refrain that has played throughout Russia's
torturous economic transition, wondering aloud, like freight
handler Lida Gavrilova: "What will become of us?"
Like other state employees, she complained that ill-executed
reforms have already left a trail of human casualties throughout
the country. Rather than closing idle state factories or laying
off excess workers at the monopolies and training them for new
work, the government simply withholds their pay for months to
cover budget shortfalls. Those who have succeeded in making the
transition to private enterprise mostly did so without any help
from the state.
Miners Learn From Rail Workers
Railroad workers have had more clout than redundant miners
and factory workers because strikes and disruptions anywhere along
the track can wreak havoc with the schedules and budget of the
entire network. But miners have learned a lesson from their
railroad counterparts: A recent miners strike blocked the
Trans-Siberian for 10 days.
Although the railroads are vital to the economy of Russia
today, some analysts contend that their role as primary carriers
of cargo are numbered. They believe that the potholed back roads
linking the hinterlands will one day be replaced with a network of
freeways.
"Considering the huge territory we have to cover in this
country, we will probably never be fully independent of the
railroads," said Valentin V. Korshunov, head of the federal postal
service that relies chiefly on rail and air services to carry
mail. "But Russia will one day have a modern highway and trucking
network, and then we will be able to ease our dependence."
In the meantime, the only competition is unsanctioned
back-door dealings like the dining-car delivery team and
conductresses who, for token bribes, sell open compartments in the
first-class carriages to second-class passengers.
"We all have to make ends meet, and I couldn't do it on my
state salary," said Slava, a burly cook who said he makes twice
his normal pay with the internal moonlighting.
But it has never occurred to him or his colleagues to form a
small company that could bid for the contract to handle the goods
he already delivers for friends they have made along their regular
route.
"I'd be taxed and regulated into poverty," the career
railroad worker said, wiping at the sweat produced in the
two-minute melee at the remote Mogocha station. "It's easier to be
a private businessman if you have a state job as cover."
Search the archives of the Los Angeles Times for similar
stories. You will not be charged to look for stories, only to
retrieve one.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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