The nation’s state-owned railway company on Feb. 12 cancelled all high-speed intercity routes on the 10 Hyundai Rotem trains that Ukraine purchased from the South Korean company leading up to the 2012 European soccer championship.
Ukrzaliznytsia said in a news release
that the route cancellation is part of an indefinite “technical inspection.”
Yunsuk Choi,
Hyundai’s local general director, told the Kyiv Post that the inspection was
scheduled. It did not say if and when the trains will resume operation.
The railway company said that passengers who purchased the high-speed — known as intercity+ train tickets — will be reimbursed the difference in price once they
get transferred to lower category trains.
Linking Kyiv with other large cities such as, Donetsk,
Kharkiv, Lviv, Zaporizhya and others, the high-speed trains have broken down in
harsh winter weather conditions.
In mid-January, a Kyiv-bound train from Lviv
stopped 40 kilometers outside the city and underwent repairs for 40 minutes
before resuming its route. On Dec. 10, a Kyiv-bound Hyundai Rotem train from
Donetsk arrived 3.5 hours late due to technical complications.
Ukrzalyznytsia reimbursed passengers Hr 800,000 for delays
to high-speed trains produced by Korea’s Hyundai Rotem, Director General of the
Ukrainian High-Speed Railway Company Leonid Loboiko told journalists in Kyiv on
Jan. 30.
“All the passengers who applied at the cash desks
received compensation,” he said.
According to Loboiko, the average compensation was about Hr
100.
Ukrzaliznytsia has compensated passengers for delays to
Hyundai trains longer than 30 minutes.
Ukraine paid $30 million for each train.
Kyiv
Post editor Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].
