It may soon be possible to make the 1,000-kilometer trip from Lviv to Kharkiv in three-four hours.
Speaking at the All-Ukrainian Forum Ukraine 30 on Feb. 22, Infrastructure Minister Vladyslav Krikliy announced that this year, construction will begin on the first part of a 2,000 kilometer network of high-speed railway tracks across the country.
Once the network is completed, it will be possible to travel from Lviv to Kharkiv at speeds of up to 250 kilometers an hour, completing the trip in “three to four hours,” President Volodymyr Zelensky stated during his opening statements at the forum.
Right now, it takes 14 hours to complete the 1,000-kilometer trip between Lviv and Kharkiv by Intercity high-speed trains. The maximum speed of these trains is 160 kilometers per hour.
The first step in the process will be to build 80 kilometers of high-speed tracks from the Polish border to western Lviv’s Sknyliv station, near the Lviv airport. This would facilitate travel to and from Poland without delays at the border caused by the different gauge of European and Ukrainian railways.
Oleg Zhuravlov, deputy chairman of the supervisory board of Ukrzaliznytsia, said a project like this would cost $1 billion, which Ukrzaliznytsia does not have.
“This project is absolutely realistic for Ukraine,” Zhuravlov told the Kyiv Post. “But not without financing from the state and international investment.” For him, it is mainly a question of political will.
The political will appears to exist. As part of his announcement, Krikliy noted that, “for the first time in 30 years, a sum of Hr 4 billion has been allocated from the state budget to improve passenger service, including 100 new train carriages, electrification, and a high-speed rail.”
According to the plan Krikliy outlined yesterday, Ukraine’s high-speed rail network would eventually extend out from the capital, with trains running between the Kyiv-Lviv-Polish border, from Kyiv to Odesa, between Kyiv and Kharkiv and along the Kyiv-Dnipro-Zaporizhia line.
By 2030, Ukraine plans to have 39 high-speed trains carrying five million passengers per year.
“We need the speed of the 21st century and integration with the railways of the EU, accelerating the delivery of goods and containers,” Krikliy added.
Zhuralov agreed that this project is absolutely necessary for Ukraine.
Much of Ukraine’s 40,000 kilometers of passenger and freight train railways have been neglected for years and are generally in very poor condition.
Transport accounts for about 6% of Ukraine’s GDP and, together with related industries, employs about 1 million people in the country.
“Improving infrastructure in several areas has a much greater multiplier effect than in one,” Krikliy said. “That is why it is important to develop them.”
Zhuravlov believes that if Ukraine had already had a high-speed train from Lviv to Donetsk, “perhaps 2014 and the war would have never happened. When people communicate, when they are stitched together by railways, it is a completely different country.”
Past troubles
South Korea’s Hyundai Corporation may carry out the project.
Hyundai is planning to start negotiations with South Korea’s government and multilateral lenders to win financing for a major part of track construction and for 10 high speed trains, Eun Soo Choi, Hyundai’s vice president for commercial transport, told the infrastructure forum.
“We are ready to provide financing for several projects,” Choi said in a video address. He said that Hyundai will spend $2 million for a pre-feasibility study for the high-speed rail network.
Ukraine’s relationship with Hyundai has run into trouble in the past.
Leading up to the 2012 European soccer championship, Ukraine purchased 10 high-speed intercity electric trains manufactured by Hyundai Rotem, the South Korean company’s rolling stock manufacturing arm. Ukraine paid $30 million for each train.
After a series of breakdowns and malfunctions due to harsh winter weather conditions in Ukraine, Ukraine’s state-owned railway monopoly Ukrzaliznytsia cancelled all high-speed intercity routes on the 10 Hyundai trains in February 2014.
After facing threats of penalties by the Ukrainian government, Hyundai paid for repairs and the high-speed trains resumed service by the end of the summer of 2014. Today, all 10 Hyundai Intercity high-speed trains operate on three different routes.
In the midst of troubles with the Hyundai trains, Ukraine’s government also purchased two high-speed trains from the Ukrainian company Kryukiv Trains, adding them to the intercity train inventory. These trains had been available since 2012, but with no market demand for them, they sat idle until the purchase in 2014.
