Romania’s rail infrastructure is in poor condition

Spas Kraynin, Bulgarian National Radio, February 20, 2025

Spas Kraynin: We now return to yesterday’s accident. The head of a train from the Bulgarian company PIMK has died in a serious train accident near Craiova. According to the Romanian national railway company, the accident happened after the wagons of a freight train derailed and ended up on the adjacent track. The Bulgarian company’s train was traveling on the line and hit the derailed wagons.

We’re joined by our colleague Vladimir Mitev, who followed the case, now on “Before all” emission. Good morning.

Good morning.

Colleague Mitev, first of all, tell us at this moment, at this hour, what the Romanian press is writing, what the Romanian institutions are saying – is the derailment of the train the cause of this accident?

It is clear that it was the passage of wagons from another line on the PIMK train line that led to the accident. But it is still too early to say what caused the derailment of the wagons in question. I had the opportunity to speak to the director of AGIFER last night. This is a government institution, an agency that deals with rail investigations and generally determines and regulates in such cases exactly what happened. The director was very keen to tell me that it is still too early to give any explanation and that it is not the role of his institution to apportion blame, but rather to look for ways to improve practices, human activity, and the technology that was used. So, AGIFER’s director, Mr. Dumitru, said that the investigation they are expected to conduct will take perhaps up to a year, despite the fact that yesterday we also had a statement from the Minister of Transport, Sorin Grindeanu, who asked for this investigation to be concluded as soon as possible.

Usually, this type of investigation takes quite a long time, because a number of experts are appointed to establish the cause of the train going off the tracks. But can we still look for causes in the old infrastructure? What is the state of Romania’s rail infrastructure?

This was a question that I asked myself, because yesterday, a press release was issued by the employers’ organization of Romania’s private railway operators, which includes Rail Cargo, the other company whose train was involved in this incident. The press release strongly states that the railway infrastructure in Romania is at a very low level and, in some cases, has not been modernized since, as they themselves say, Austria-Hungary built the railways. The private railway operators in Romania have called for action to be taken as soon as possible so that investment can be made in improving the railway infrastructure and, in fact, this position was somewhat confirmed by my interlocutor.

It is obvious and well-known that there are problems with the rail infrastructure in Romania. For example, in many places, such as Bulgaria, trains run at a fairly low speed, for example, 40-50 km per hour. It is well known that higher speeds are risky. It is impossible to say at the moment whether the rail infrastructure is the cause of the accident in question, but this is the general context in which this incident is taking place.

I would like to remind our listeners, and yesterday a number of other media outlets also reminded us that a little over a month ago, a freight train of the same Bulgarian company suffered an accident in Bulgaria. Two people died and six were injured in the accident. But can we also think of failures on the part of PIMK?

We see that a month later another train of the same company suffered an accident, although not on Bulgarian territory, but abroad.

I have no such information leading to such a conclusion in this particular case. Each case seems to me to be individual. For me, at least, the context is important, namely that in our countries, in our region, there is not much investment in rail infrastructure. In our region, the focus is more on highways. The easy access of every citizen to a private car somehow leads to changes in the emphasis on transportation.

In fact, we know that our countries have been able to obtain funds under the so-called PNRR (National Recovery and Resilience Plan) for several years. And I remember that when this plan was being discussed in Romania, there was such criticism of the initial version of the plan, which placed enormous emphasis on road development, on the development of highways. At the same time, at European level, there is a policy which concerns the development of railways. And I remember that the European Commission had comments in this respect and wanted the funds from Romania’s recovery and sustainability plan to go to the railways.

When such incidents happen in our country, there is a reasonable question. How long are we going to say that funds are needed and how long are we going to repeat the same thing? And we have to have dozens of people dying all the time to raise this question – why doesn’t the state make sure that it invests in this infrastructure, or at least invest enough so that lives are not lost?

I guess I would go back to the work of that institution that I said I spoke to yesterday, the Romanian agency that does rail investigations. Its Director General explained to me that AGIFER operates exclusively in accordance with European standards, which means that there are certain rules, procedures, regulations which shape these investigations that they carry out in the event of accidents. And the idea of these investigations is ultimately to recommend what can be improved.

From that point on, when a certain amount of such advice accumulates, once the European standards are met in these investigations, it is left to the political element to intervene, if I understand correctly. That is my conclusion, not his. But it is logical that the political element should pay attention to these conclusions and direct resources towards implementing the changes that have been recommended.

It remains to be seen how the investigation in Romania will evolve in the context of this incident and to compare the actions of the Romanian authorities with those of the Bulgarian authorities in identical situations. Let me just say to our listeners that the head of the Plovdiv company in question, Iliyan Filipov, told colleagues from the 24 Hours newspaper that this was a ridiculous incident and that the probability of this type of incident happening is 1 in 10 million.

I would like to thank fellow journalist Vladimir Mitev from Romania for the rail accident that took place yesterday. We will follow this story later on the Bulgarian National Radio’s Horizon program.

Photo: (source: Pixabay, CC0)

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