Passengers on Moscow’s commuter trains have been forced to ride on roofs and between cars after repair work caused mass cancellations of trains on at least half of the main rail links into the city.
Some news reports linked the cancellations to the upcoming opening of a Sapsan bullet train to Nizhny Novgorod, scheduled for July 30, but railroad officials denied any connection.
More than 100 of the 270 daily commuter trains running on the Gorkovskaya Railroad to Kursky Station have been canceled or rescheduled until mid-July, an operator for Moscow Railways’ hotline told The Moscow Times on Wednesday.
The rail lines to Kievsky and Savyolovksy stations have also seen a wave of cancellations, and passengers have complained of problems at the Yaroslavsky and Paveletsky stations as well.
That means schedule changes are causing havoc to at least half of Moscow Railways’ 10 main lines.
The cancellations have created hour-long gaps in the schedule, mostly during non-rush-hour periods during the day and never on weekends, the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily reported Wednesday.
But passengers are still accumulating at stations and storming functioning trains, crowding them to the point that entry becomes physically impossible and the people inside start to faint in the scorching summer heat.
The more reckless passengers have mounted the roofs, risking death from the 3,000-volt electric current overhead. No casualties have been reported.
Railroad representatives said all schedule changes were announced in advance and the repair works necessitating the changes could only be conducted in the summertime.
“People are indignant, but if we don’t do these repairs now, we will be unable to safely transport passengers in the nearest future,” Moscow Railways spokesman Vladimir Myagkov told Komsomolskaya Pravda.
The operator for the company’s hotline said the state-owned company conducts repairs on various parts of its lines every year. But she could not explain why the repairs had resulted in a disruption of such magnitude this year.
“The nature of the works is different. They have to bring in heavy machinery and turn off the current,” she said.
Myagkov said the opening of the Sapsan train had nothing to do with the problems because the railroad started preparing its route in 2006 and finished all work on it last month.
But the launch of the Sapsan train between Moscow and St. Petersburg in December caused schedule disruptions — already a regular occurrence in recent years — to intensify. That train runs on the Oktyabrskaya Railroad from Leningradsky Station.
Most countries build separate railways for bullet trains, but the German-built Sapsans use regular tracks in Russia.
Railroad officials said repair works on the line to Kursky Station are scheduled to end July 16 but may be extended.