In January-July 2015, the average freight delivery speed on the Russian Railways' network was 345 kilometres per day, 49 km per day or 16.6% more than during the same period in 2014, the Company says.
A positive trend was recorded on all railways and on all categories of shipments. The maximum speed achieved by block train shipments was 521 km per day, 78 km per day or 17.6% more than last year.
The highest speed for freight deliveries was achieved on consignments on Far East Railways, at 437 km per day, up 48 km per day on 2014, East Siberian Railways, 420 km per day, up 75 km per day, West Siberian Railways, 416 km per day, an increase of 55 kilometres per day, and Krasnoyarsk Railways, 408 km per day or 48 kilometres per day more than last year.
The increase in average delivery speeds was achieved by implementing organisational and technical measures developed by the Company in 2014-2015. Thus, by increasing the average speed to 46.5 kph, the average time the consignment spends "in motion" was reduced from 43.3 to 37 hours. In addition, the Company halved the duration of the initial-end operations at the loading and unloading stations. Russian Railways also reduced wagon downtime at the marshalling yards.
A significant role in increasing average delivery speeds was organising freight trains by timetable. To that end, as of 1 August 2015 the 2014/2015 timetable provided for 1,293 train routes, 318 more than last year.
The indicator for delivery speeds takes into account the entire range of operations, from loading to unloading, including a significant proportion of factors that are outside the control and responsibility of Russian Railways. It includes, for example, the downtime of wagons awaiting unloading, including trains not moving for reasons attributable to the consignees.
Due to the limited capacity of sea ports to unload wagons on the port approaches, this year has seen an average of 230 loaded trains standing idle every day, which reduced the network-wide delivery speed by 17 kilometres per day.
In calculating delivery speeds, other types of downtime are also included which are independent of the carrier, such as customs clearance. Delivery speeds also fall in cases where Russian Railways is unable to make the final delivery of goods that have arrived because the consignee does not work at night or at the weekend.