Tehran, Iran, May 6
Trend:
The Deputy Head of Islamic Republic of Iran Railways (RAI) has announced the increase of railway transportation.
"We are obliged to increase the cargo and passenger transportation by 30 percent and 20 percent respectively to follow up the goals of the Sixth Development Plan(2016-2021)," he said, Trend reports citing ILNA.
"The Plan has indicated certain duties in regards to achieving these goals. For example, 1 percent of oil sale should be assign to the railway, while investors in railway should receive incentives," he added.
Referring to the problems in railway network, the official said, "The issue about cargo transport in railway network is the lack of connection between cargo sources and railway. On various routes such as Shiraz, Kermanshah, Rasht and Hamadan, there is only passenger transportation tracks, while the activity in cargo transportation is low."
In his words, the national railways seeks to link cargo sources to rail network to increase the efficiency of railway transport." He noted another issue is to increase the railway fleet for more cargo transportation. "There are two solutions that are being followed, namely to increase the capacity of current fleet and also to develop it," he said.
"We seek to operate the current fleet with maximum productivity, but we also plan to develop the fleet after new memorandum of understanding was signed last Iranian year (started on March 21,2018) to produce 800 cargo wagons," noted the official.