Better railway transport safety

03 March 2023
Better railway transport safety
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Sponsor: Volodymyr Kreidenko, member of the Servant of the People faction 

Who is affected: enterprises of the railway sector, users of railway transport services, scrap metal dealers, and other businesses 

Summary of the bill: 

  • the bill provisions an introduction of the list of parts, aggregates, and components supplied to railway transport. This list will be approved by the Cabinet of Ministers, and items on this list will have to meet traffic safety requirements and have identification numbers 
  • used wheelsets, side frames, car body frames, couplings, parts, aggregates, and components will be no longer allowed to be used in the production of new railway vehicles 
  • new regulations regarding the financing of train traffic safety will be introduced: 
  • railway transport enterprises will be obliged to provide the necessary funding 
  • this funding will be used on preventive technical measures aimed at ensuring accident-free operation and maintenance of buildings, tracks, railway cars, trains, equipment, mechanisms, and devices 
  • railway transport enterprises will be obliged to spend at least one percent of their gross income for the previous year on the train transport safety 
  • it will be prohibited to buy and sell elements of railway transport infrastructure, parts and components of railway cars and trains as scrap metal. The prohibition will not be applied to enterprises that use this property in the course of their activities conditional on them providing the original or a duly certified copy or extract from a document confirming that this property was disposed 
  • the Cabinet of Ministers will approve the list of railway transport infrastructure elements and parts and components of train cars that cannot be sold or bought as scrap metal. 

Why this is important: according to the explanatory note provided by the author of the draft bill, market operators state that about 25 to 30% of the railway fleet suffers pillaging annually. Thieves steal primarily parts of the train cars’ brake systems, main and arterial parts of the air distributors. This situation can lead to disasters and accidents. Most of the stolen elements of railway infrastructure are sold as scrap metal or resold. 

What is right: 

  • the safety of passengers and goods transported by railway will increase. Recently, a freight train derailed in Boryspil. A similar incident happened with a Kyiv — Warsaw passenger train in Volyn 
  • after the prohibition to buy railway infrastructure elements as scrap metal, criminals will be much less motivated to steal property from the Ukrainian railways.