OREANDA-NEWS In January, loading on the Russian railway network decreased by 1.8 percent year-on-year. The Russian Railways press service reports on the drop in traffic volumes.

Loading dropped to 93.1 million tons after the entry into force of the Rules of Non-Discriminatory Access (PD), which have not been in force since the spring of 2022. According to Mikhail Glazkov, head of the Central Directorate of Russian Railways Traffic Management, the freight transportation market has changed because of this.

"The transportation possibilities have changed a bit, there are loads that provide greater added value and a greater contribution to GDP than the loads that had an advantage last year," he said.

The company attributed the trend to a decrease in the volume of construction materials presentation (minus 27.2 percent, to 5.2 million tons) due to the completion of major construction projects and the postponement of infrastructure projects.

"Despite the decrease in the absolute loading rate, the capacity of the railway infrastructure is used at the maximum level. The increase in the volume of transportation work performed is also evidenced by the tariff turnover, which increased by six percent," the company's representatives explained.

Earlier, Glazkov said that the average speed of trains in Russia by the end of 2024 fell by two kilometers per hour, to 35.7 kilometers per hour, which is comparable to the level of 1992. The reason for the situation was an unprecedented oversupply of wagons, which was not encountered either in modern Russia or in the USSR. At the beginning of 2025, there were 1.382 million wagons on public roads, which is almost one and a half times more than is necessary for the transportation of goods.