The three private railway operators in Romania make about 20% of the railway traffic in the country, but data from these companies was not computed into the country’s Transport Master Plan, said Constantin Oprea, who represents Transferoviar Grup, one of the three private operators.

In 2013, these companies had 14 million passengers. CFR Calatori, the state-owned railways passenger transport company had 48 million passengers. The current Master Plan mentions that all railway segments which are deemed ‘non-interoperable’ do not server more than 1,000 passengers a day, but Oprea says this is ‘completely false’.

“Data presented by private operators are not taken into account. For example, the segment Bucharest – Oltenita, operated by Transferoviar, has over 3,800 passengers a day, while the route Bucharest – Constanta, operated by CFR, has 3,500 to 9,000 passengers a day. The master plan completely ignores data from private operators,” said Oprea, quoted by Agerpres.

Romania has some 10,800 km of railway, and some 3,700 of them have been deemed ‘non-interoperable’, and three quarters of them were leased to private companies.

editor@romania-insider.com