At its regular session on Wednesday, the Slovak cabinet agreed to cancel passenger railway transport on 25 regional railway lines. Railway transport will be replaced by buses on three of them. This measure should bring annual cost saving of SKK 468.83 million to national railway company Zeleznicna Spolocnost (ZSSK). The reason for cancellation of operation on selected railway lines is allocation of the sum for state subsidized transport from the 2003 state budget, which is lower than ZSSK’s requirement.
Cost ratio was a significant criterion for decision to restrict passenger transport on selected railway tracks. The canceled routes have SKK 5.7 costs per SKK 1 of sales on average. The next criteria were parallel railway and road transport in the above routes and low utilization of these railway lines.