Development of proposals for increasing the profitability of passenger rail transportation in Ukraine

Abstract

The current state of passenger rail transportation in Ukraine is investigated to identify the factors of increasing the profitability of the sector. The analysis of the occupancy of passenger cars on various traffic routes of trains and estimation of the passenger number on local and through traffic routes depending on their range are performed. The direct relationship between these indicators used to determine the required amount of the rolling stock is revealed. The approach to determining the potential users of transport products of rail transportation with the help of the cluster analysis method is proposed. This approach is based on identifying the cluster (group) of potential passengers of certain types of rail cars by virtue of the analysis of passenger traffic on different routes using the agglomerative hierarchical classification algorithm. The proposals for improving the financial condition of the sector through the introduction of the transport product of passenger transportation in special passenger cars, including the traffic organization of commercial and special trains, provision of additional transport services, namely using passenger cars as a transport means or a "hotel on wheels", using the enhanced-comfort rolling stock for passenger groups, reducing the rail travel duration due to combining movement and rest, setting tariffs for transportation of passenger groups based on the profit rate are submitted. The cost and quality factors of development of the system of additional transport services on rail transport of Ukraine, with the rail transport acting as a transport mode to deliver passengers to their destinations or as an object of interest for tourists are formulated.