Who's Afraid Of Trains

Two passenger trains collided on July 2 near Novi Sad injuring 26 persons but fortunately causing no deaths.

The investigation started with the arrest of the station chief at Sajlovo, where the collision took place.

Zivorad Maksimovic, Director General of the ZTP Beograd railroad company, said the crash was almost certainly caused by human error. In the days following the crash the Serbian railroad company contacted tourist agencies to inform them that contracts on transporting passengers to the Montenegro coast were invalid. New contracts would be drawn up at prices higher by 30%, ZTP Beograd said but only as long as regular rail services were not endangered.

The cancellation of the contracts could have been caused by fears of a possible rail catastrophe. The official statements by the Serbian, Montenegrin and federal railroad companies made no comment on possible dangers but the Serbian railroad trade magazine ``Pruga'' said in mid April that a collision of two passenger trains, one domestic and one international, was narrowly avoided near Belgrade. That report was buried inside an article on the need to improve the remote control center for electric trains which prevented the crash. That center's equipment is over 20 years old.

What the public has not been told is well known to the railroad authorities in both Yugoslav republics.

The Serbian Transport Ministry said the state of the railroads was extremely bad mainly because the rail companies can't rehaul over 20% of rail tracks which would be regularly maintained in normal operating conditions. The greatest blow to the railroads came amid last year's hyperinflation. A BelgradeBar return ticket cost the same as a liter of milk and a return ticket to Novi Sad cost one egg. Transport prices were set by the state and state owned companies didn't pay even those laughable prices.

In January this year the railroad companies faced an incomeexpense ratio of 164. That ratio dropped to 13 after the new Dinar was introduced but even that stands higher than the prewar 11.8. The railroads were subsidized directly from primary issue grants (last year those grants accounted for 80% of railroad income) but the final balance reveals the age and insecurity of the equipment.

Railroads in need of an overhaul mean traffic will be slower at the very least. The average age of railroad tracks is 30 years but the state of tunnels and bridges is somewhat better. That is just part of the reason why speeds over 60 kph are banned on 29% of Serbian railroads while speeds over 100 kph are allowed on just 7%. The signaling equipment that ensures safety and speed is over 15 years old. 50% of locomotives are over 20 years old while another 30% are over 10 years old. Up to 82% of some types of locomotives have been scrapped. A similar situation faces rolling stock as well as everything else that should serve to convince Europe that there is no need to avoid the Serbian railroads.

The federal railroad company is quite convincing in proving that all the national European rail companies and their associations are satisfied in their dealings with the Yugoslav railroads even amid the embargo. Getting the Yugoslav railroads back into the European network after the sanctions are lifted depends entirely on the authorities, officials at the Federal railroad company said. They added that state ownership of the railroads includes meeting all obligations. That masterservant relationship is easily recognizable in the current complaints that the railroads can't collect debts from companies that use their transport services most often. Most of those companies are owned by the state of Serbia.

The collision and arrest of the Sajlovo station chief raise the question of whether an assistant Transport Minister in the Milosevic government could at least have the courtesy to publicly state that the blame can't be laid on just one railroad employee and perhaps offer his resignation. No railroad official is going to come out and say he feels at least partly to blame until he is forced to, not as long as the ideas of one center are more important than anything that could happen to the 20,000 people who travel the BelgradeBar line every day.