"High-speed" train will deliver to Ganja later, and is more expensive than buses

On December 30, an important event will happen in the history of the Azerbaijani railway - a high-speed passenger train line Baku-Ganja-Baku will be launched. Four two-storey modern cars produced by the Swiss company Stadler will be able to carry 367 passengers, nine of which will be first class, 27 - business class, the remaining 296 people in standard class. Tickets at the box office and the way online are sold. On even days, the train will depart from Baku, and on odd days it will return to the capital from Ganja.

In Azerbaijan, such trains have been used since June 2015 on the Baku-Sumgayit line, but they have not become a high-speed yet; since, having the opportunity to run at a speed of 300 km per hour, the trains from Baku to Sumgayit run for about one hour. It is possible to reach Sumgayit on the Sumgayit road in 25 minutes. These trains are used by those who are not in a hurry, they should get to the center of Baku, since the railway station is in the center, or is afraid of car accidents on the Sumgayit road. In any case, since 2015, the intensity of automobile traffic on this road has not decreased.

The Railway Administration has published the schedule of Baku-Ganja-Baku trains and it becomes clear again that high-speed Swiss race trains will not travel faster than the production trains of the long-vanished state of the GDR still used in Azerbaijan.

From Baku the train will depart at 9 am, and arrive in Ganja at 13:28. Travel time is 4 hours 28 minutes. The distance between the two cities is 364.3 km. Consequently, the average train speed will be 85.1 km. It is possible that it will reach the end station late, then the average speed will fall below. On the way, the train will stop and take passengers at 25 stations, including such sparsely populated ones as Mugan, Padar, Garasu, Zazaly ...., so it cannot be called not a high-speed train, but an electric train, so well-known to the Baku citizens.

Compare with bus travel: from Baku to Ganja buses of moderate comfort deliver passengers in 3.5 hours, and if four people order a passenger taxi, the path will be faster, and the car will take you to the doorstep. What can attract the Stadler train under such conditions?

Railroad leaders could count on the fare; but the fares for the "high-speed" road show that the cheapest standard class tickets will be sold for 15 manat, business class 50 manat, the first class will cost an astronomical sum of 100 manat. Of course, those who get off at intermediate stations will pay less depending on the distance traveled.

Passengers are now paying 7-8 manat for travel on buses from one city to another. The cheapest ticket for the "high-speed train" costs 15 manat. The result of the comparison is depressing numbers: it is twice as expensive to travel by a new train and a third longer than in buses.

Let us compare our train, which cannot be called "high-speed" with the Georgian company of the same kind, which has been running for several years on the Tbilisi-Batumi line. It overcomes 550 km distance in 3.5 hours, and the ticket costs 25 lari (15.8 manat).

Azerbaijan lags behind countries with a similar history on the development of railway communication - Georgia, Russia and Uzbekistan. In Uzbekistan the high-speed trains "Afrasiyab" of Spanish production (Patentes TalgoS.L company) rush at speeds of up to 210 km per hour on the Tashkent-Samarkand-Karshi and Tashkent-Samarkand-Bukhara lines.

The Azerbaijani Railway Department cannot respond to citizens' accusations in social networks. A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Railway Department only says that the low speed of our trains is due to the incompleteness of the re-equipment of the railway and the installation of protective walls, which guarantee people, animals and cars to get out of the way. In that case, why hurry to launch new trains on an unprepared track? The second question will be relevant for a long time: with such ticket prices and speed of passenger delivery, the occupancy of the cars raises great doubts, and therefore, one should not hope for the new line to be self-sustaining. Will this not lead to a rise in the cost of travel on the Baku-Ganja-Baku train?

We would like to add that the Azerbaijani Railway Department promises to build a road and launch the railway line Baku-Gabala. The trains on this future route are also "high-speed" ...