Railroad Passenger Transport in the Soviet Union

Abstract

T l HE Soviet people are on the move. Whether of their own will or because of unofficial pressure, Soviet men and women accept posts on their new frontiers, in the Virgin Lands, in the valley of the Angara, in the Soviet Far East. When the Trans-Siberian Railroad was built at the turn of the century, it opened a new era and provided Russia's pioneer fringe with all-weather mass transportation. Internal migration in the Soviet Union is not as dramatic today as it was in the early l900'S, but it involves large numbers of people nevertheless. And though a few, who are in a hurry or who hold a high position, take to the airlines, the great bulk of the Soviet traveling public chooses the railroads. The railroads are, by Soviet standards, efficient, their fares are low, and their service, though slow and crowded, is still vastly superior to that which prevailed only a few years ago. For nearly a century, railroads have been the principal means of travel over the vast territory of the Soviet Union. Although newer means, by highway and by air, now compete with the railroads, their share in the total passenger traffic remains high-8o.6 per cent in 1956.' The growth trends of railroad passenger traffic, the services available, and the density and areal distribution of those services illustrate a vital facet of the Soviet transportation system. In 1960 the railroad system of the Soviet Union was second only to that of the United States (Table I). During the past fifty years railroads everywhere have felt the competition of road and air transport. In the United States, in 1916, railroads carried 98 per cent of all public passenger traffic. In 1954 the percentage was only 37.6; intercity buses carried 35.8 per cent, airlines 24.8 per cent, and waterways 1.8 per cent.2 In the Soviet Union, too, railroads lost part of their share to the growing network of suburban and intercity bus lines and, over longer distances, to Aeroflot, the Soviet airline system. In 1913 Russian railroads carried 91.1 per cent of the total