Think Railways

The Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine and the European Investment Bank (EIB) have reached an agreement for the co-funding of projects to replace the obsolete rolling stock of municipal public transportation companies in Ukraine for the total amount of 300 million EUR.

Based on the based on the proposals from cities, the credit portfolio of the program for the replacement of the rolling stock of urban public transportation companies reached approximately 600 million EUR. The Ministry of Infrastructure and EIB have previously reached an agreement for financing up to 50 % of the total project costs.

This year UAH 100 million will be allocated from the state budget for the purchase of rolling stock, stated Vladimir Shulmeister, First Deputy Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine. "We hope that thanks to the successful cooperation with international financial institutions, we can cover the lack of funding for the construction and rehabilitation of tramway and trolleybus lines, for the renewal of public transport rolling stock, and for accelerating change in the industry ", he added.

The ministry is also working on creating the legislative conditions for the implementation of automated fare collection system in urban passenger transport.

Since 1991, the development of the urban public transportation system in Ukraine actually stopped due to the lack of funds in local budgets. This has lead to the dramatic decrease of the rolling stock: from 12.3 thousand units to 6.2 thousand units including 80% being critically depreciated and in need of replacement. Approximately 400 trolleybuses and 200 tramways need to be modernised.

Tram & metro facts and  figures 

- A number of 22 cities have tramway network( in total 1927 km, 177 routes) and 3 have also metro infrastructure (Kyiv, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk ; 110 km & 85 stations).
- rolling stock fleet: 2620 tramways, 1180 metros
-  in 2014, 769.9 million passengers traveled by tramway and 725.8 million by metro.