The Railway Transport Union on Thursday called for all train routes that were suspended due to epidemiological measures to be restored as of 1 March considering that the health situation has improved.

“We will send a letter to Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and Transport Minister Oleg Butkovic and all county prefects for them to exert pressure on the management board of HZ Passenger Transport, for all train routes to be reinstated as of 1 March,” union leader Mario Grebesic said.

He added that all the county prefects, who had been contacted by the union, said that they expect all train routes that were closed because of epidemiological measures, to be reinstated as of 1 March, yet a few days ago HZ-Passenger Transport sent a letter to HZ-Infrastructure asking that those routes remain out of use.

Since 23 December 2020, due to epidemiological measures, the Zagreb-Split and Osijek-Rijeka routes were put out of use, in addition to about 100 local routes. The letter from HZ-Passenger Transport to HZ-Infrastructure called for the suspended routes to remain out of use, and even called for some additional routes to be abolished, Grbesic said.

“The railway operator is deluding the public saying that routes are being shut down because of the current pandemic situation, using that as an excuse even though restrictive measures that were introduced in December 2020 have since been lifted and schools and universities are back in use,” he said, underlining that no other country in the region had imposed similar measures in railway transport.

Grbesic recalled that HZ-Passenger Transport had signed an agreement with the government in 2018 for services of general economic interest in public rail transport.

“Based on that agreement HZ-Passenger Transport will receive HRK 4.5 billion in subsidies from 2018 to 2028 and of that HRK 474 million is earmarked for 2021 for trains to continue operating regardless of the number of passengers,” said Grbesic.

He warned that abolishing train routes has affected Dalmatia, and its one million residents, in particular.

He also recalled that the European Parliament declared 2021 as the year of railways and that the main objective was to promote railway transport as a sustainable, innovative, interconnected, safe and economically accessible mode of transport.

“What are we doing in Croatia? We are abolishing train routes and closing railway stations,” concluded Grbesic.

Railwaymen’s Union leader Zoran Marsic said that Croatia, as a member of the European Union, accepted the objectives of its strategic policy and committed to transfer 30% of its freight road transport to the railways by 2030 and increase that to 50% by 2050.

“Croatia also committed to transferring 50% of its passenger transport to the railways by 2030, said Marsic and added that “serious EU countries are accelerating their railway transport in an effort to achieve those objectives and reduce greenhouse gases while Croatia is not going in that direction.”

“If HZ-Infrastructure does not invest in railway infrastructure, trains will travel 30, 40 or 50 kilometres per hour and that will not be a competitive service because no one will want to ride on trains like that,” Marsic warned and added that HZ-Passenger Transport has not included the procurement of a train fleet in any of its long-term business plans.