The railway enterprises and departments of The Ukraine, Russia, Slovakia and Austria are going to sign an agreement on May, 28th in Sochi to create a joint venture in order to organize a railway transport corridor on the route Moscow - Kiev - Uzhgorod - Bratislava - Vienna, General Director of the State Railway Administration of Ukraine ("Ukrzaliznitsa"), Michael Kostyuk, announced to journalists after a meeting of the project working group.
"This route will allow the creation of the conditions to gather cargoes from Asian states, including the continuation of the so-called "Silk Way", so that cargoes can be delivered to Europe without rerloading.
"Ukrainian railways and the Railways of Russia, Austria and Slovakia has been negotiating for two years to organize such a route. Russians have built the "Dobra" Terminal in Slovakia and ˇ°Ukrzaliznitsaˇ± absolutely has enough capacity to operate it. The Slovak part will organize internal deliveries, and the general function of all parties will be to organize the logistics and conditions that attract cargoes,ˇ± he told.
Mr Kostyuk noted that the creation of the joint venture means equal participation of the parties in its authorized capital. In his opinion the volume of cargo transported will be 30-40 million tons a year if the project can be developed successfully.
"It is most likely that logistic terminals in Austria and Slovakia will be built by private investment. In SlovakiaUkraine has good experience in building 1520 mm wide track, he therefore expected to be an active participant in construction.
In Mr Kostyuk's opinion, the future transport corridor should not just be exclusively focused on freight traffic. "It makes good sense to develop combined services in this direction to include passengers," he said. the question of giving enough ground to build a broader gauge line needs to be solved," the General Director of the Department added,
