Ukraine to return rail quotas as 20,000 wagons get stuck on way to EU borders

More than 20,700 freight wagons are queueing for Ukraine’s western rail border crossings. Only 837 of them are actually at the border. To stop the backlog growing, Ukrainian Railways (UZ) will return to monthly planning and quotas in November. As of 23 October, 20,718 wagons were heading for the western border, according to UZ. On average, a wagon waited 19 days to be handed over to a neighbouring rail operator. This has grown to 32 days at Batiovo on the Hungarian border.

“This is not a queue at the border in the conventional sense. The wagons get stuck well before they even reach it,” Iryna Kosse, senior research fellow at the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting (IER), wrote on Telegram.

According to Kosse, nearly half of the queue is carrying ore, and another 3,570 wagons are carrying grain. Demand does not seem to be the issue. PKP LHS is ready to accept six to seven trains per day for ArcelorMittal, and a Slovak rail operator has warned that a steelmaking customer may switch to Brazilian ore shipped through Polish ports.

The crossings are also running below their agreed capacity. Mostyska–Medyka hands over three to four trains per track per day against an agreed six. Izov manages seven to eight against 10–12, and Yahodyn also falls short of its planned volume.

This story was originally published by RailFreight.com. Read the full story at RailFreight.com →