Development Strategy for the Railway Sector in Romania for 2001- 2010 (I)

The Government of Romania has recently approved, through the G.D. no. 1.003 from
October 4th, 2001, the development strategy of the railway transport system for 2001 - 2010, elaborated by the Ministry of Public Works, Transports and Housing. This document comprises, in coherent formula, the development strategy for a century for the railway infrastructure, passengers railway transport and freight railway transport.
Further on there are presented synthetically the main aspects regarding the Development strategy of the railway infrastructure in Romania for 2001 - 2010.

General Overview of the Infrastructure

Railway infrastructure management in Romania - which, through its length of the tracks, of 22,247 km, it is the seventh as size in Europe, after those in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland and Ukraine - is achieved by the National Railway Company CFR SA.

The State of the Infrastructure

Technical state of the railway infrastructure has recorded a continuous degradation in the last years, due to the lack of execution in due time of the necessary works, as a consequence of the budgetary insufficient transfers and of the incapacity to cover the necessary funds from its own incomes. In order to exemplify, in the next figure it is presented the evolution of the critical points during 1992 - 2001.
Practically, there are recorded important exceeded deadlines (in certain cases, up to 100%) at all general overhaul works for the railway infrastructure elements: tracks and works of art, safety traffic equipment, electrification equipment, and telecommunication installations.

Infrastructure Financing

According to the law, the allocation of the main incomes is achieved this way:
the fare for the infrastructure utilization is used in order to cover the operational expenses, maintenance and current repairs of the public railway infrastructure;

the incomes from the renting process or other taxes are used for the private railway infrastructure;
the amounts allocated from the state budget are used in order to cover the general overhauls expenses, investments, modernization, development, works generated by the natural calamities or disasters etc.

Economical Situation

Since its foundation (1998) and up to the present time CN CFR SA has developed its activities in financial balance conditions, taking into consideration the fact that it provided the safety traffic, through the maximization of the incomes and diminishing the expenses. The structure of the expenses is presented in the next diagram. The payment according to the deadlines of the debts towards the state budget, towards the social assurance budget, special funds and suppliers is conditioned by the rhythmical cashing of the fare for infrastructure utilization by the railway operators. And there are also taken into consideration the other incomes achieved from the activities of the company.

Development Program for Years 2001-2010

The main objectives of the modernization program for the railway infrastructure in Romania are:
- rehabilitation of the railway sections afferent to the sectors of the pan-European transport corridors on the Romanian territory;
- modernization of the centralization equipment from the main railway stations situated on the pan-European transport corridors;
- achievement of new electrified lines;
- modernization up to the European standards level of 13 railway stations;
- the projects for the purchase of the machines, the machinery, the equipment and the installations necessary to maintain the railway infrastructure.

Conclusions

The main directions of the activity of the development strategy implementation of the railway infrastructure could be synthesized as:
.provision of the incomes necessary for the operation of the infrastructure through the improvement of the rhythm of payment related to the debts of the railway operators as fare for the infrastructure utilization;
.rehabilitation of the railway infrastructure by stressing the public financial efforts of the works that will lead to the elimination of the gaps recorded towards the repairing programs established according to the norms;
.continuation and the acceleration of the modernization and rehabilitation process of the railway transport infrastructure in order to align it to the European performance standards, namely comfort and safety;
.extension of the implementation programs for the foreign financing projects, component of the railway infrastructure rehabilitation.
The implementation of the strategy will be correlated with the amounts allocated annually according to the State Budget Law.

Vasile Olievschi