A Breakdown or a Renaissance? – The State and Perspectives of Traditional Railway Transport in Eastern Europe

Abstract

One of the key questions of our times is whether traditional railways may have any future perspectives in opposition of high-speed trains capable for competing with air traffic. During the last decades the importance of railways as means of tansport decreased here by far quicker than in Western-Europe. By the beginning of our century the decreasing tendency of railway traffic had stopped (and even in some areas a moderate growth was observed) but as a general rule it is showing a further dropping tendency. The author is on the opinion that traditional railways do have future in the vast and scarcely populated areas of Russia and even in Ukraine but in the economically more advanced Visegrád countries and even in the Balkan the role of railway traffic will further decrease and except for the main lines very few sidelines of railway network will be preserved and operated by year 2030.