Russian Railways sees 2020 long-distance passenger traffic down 30%

MOSCOW, Nov 26 (PRIME) -- Russian Railways expects long-distance passenger traffic to contract by 30% on the year in 2020 if no additional restrictions are imposed over the coronavirus pandemic, Deputy CEO Dmitry Pegov told reporters on Thursday.

“The most optimistic thing that I can say is that we stay within the figures that I’ve disclosed this summer. We plan to transport around 844 million passengers. This is a contraction of 29.5%. But it will happen obviously if there are no additional restrictions, if we stay under the conditions that were announced currently, the forecast for contraction of passenger traffic will remain at 30%,” he said.

The fall of suburban passenger traffic will be smaller as people still have to work and as the company did not cancel any suburban trains, he said.

The company prepared three scenarios for the long-distance passenger traffic. Under the optimistic scenario, the coronavirus situation will normalize in 2021 and the borders will be open soon. In this case passenger traffic will contract only by 3.5% in 2021 as compared with 2019. Under the baseline scenario, the fall will amount to 6.9%, and under the pessimistic plan to 20–30%.

In January–March 2021, passenger traffic may plummet by 30% or even by 40%, but the situation should normalize and reach the level of 2018 in June–August, he said.

Federal Passenger Company, the subsidiary of Russian Railways for long-distance passenger transportation, did not cut procurements of new passenger wagons in 2020 in spite of the pandemic.

“It was reduced for just a month as Tver Carriage Works was under quarantine, but the cut does not exceed 5% of the planned procurement amount. If we speak about 2019, we bought these additional 5%, we added 80 wagons to the long-term contract’s order,” Pegov said.

The company also has no plans to amend the schedule of long-distance passenger trains for December 2020–January 2021, he added.

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