The Railway to Europe?

Prepared by: Liberali

Arriving on the railway platform headed for Tbilisi with plenty of time to go, Toma Kakabadze manoeuvred himself in his wheelchair with ease. But it soon got complicated, as conductors were unable to find the rail ramp. The train was ready to leave as they continued trying to figure out how to operate it. Toma reluctantly accepted the offer to be taken onto the train by hand, even though it was an unpleasant experience.

This awkwardness is common for any disabled person in Georgia. And it did not end there: he found that the seat designed for wheelchair users had already been sold out to a non-disabled person.

The Stadler Train provides special seats for wheelchair users. As Toma explains, though, that to place the wheelchair, four seats must be folded up. In this instance, three of them had already been sold. Eventually, the railway administration reassigned passengers to different seats, but it was still an unpleasant experience for Toma because of all the complications he had to go through.

Rail passengers’ rights are still not fully defined in the Georgian legislation. However, the country is obliged by the Association Agreement to partially implement the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on rail passengers’ rights and obligations by the end of 2017.

The Regulation that concerns passengers’ rights focuses a great deal of attention on the needs of people with disabilities. Meeting these needs is today up to the rail administration’s goodwill and continues to remain a challenge under improper infrastructure and services.

Insurance, compensation for delays or injury, quality control in services, and accountability to superior bodies – these are some of the many points the Regulation settles.

The rights rail passengers (don’t) have

From January 2016 to March 2017, the Ministry of Interior Affairs launched 39 investigations under Article 275 of the Criminal Code, which concerns the violation of safety regulations or procedures for operating a railway. Regulation No 1371/2007 of the European Parliament and of the Council sets novel provisions to relations between passengers and carrier companies. Under the Regulation, a state is obliged to work out a system by which passengers’ rights are distinctly defined and violations result in penalties. After the Regulation is enforced, transit companies will be obliged to provide compensation to parties suffering an injury or death as a result of accidents caused by the service provider.

Passengers will be able to file complaints to the provider and receive answers within a reasonable time. The railway operator will be responsible to a superior body to present annual reports on service quality and violations.

After the regulation is enforced, the carrier company will be obliged to compensate passengers for delays. In case of long delays, it will be responsible to provide passengers with food and accommodation and pay for their expenses for traveling by other means of transportation to the point of destination.

The regulation states that people with disabilities must have similar opportunities for rail travel compared to other non-disabled citizens. According to the document, special attention should be given to providing information to disabled persons and persons with reduced mobility concerning the accessibility of rail services. By regulation, the station manager or any other authorized person will designate points, within and outside the railway station, at which disabled persons and persons with reduced mobility can announce their arrival at the railway station and, if need be, request assistance. Furthermore, people with disabilities must be able to buy tickets on the train.

All the aforementioned obligations defined by the Regulation are not fully scripted in the national legislation. Thus, the execution of passengers’ rights depends on civil code and conscientiousness of the responsible companies.

In Georgia, rail passengers’ rights are regulated by a 2003 Order of the Minister of Transportation and Communications. The document was updated by the Ministry of Economy in 2012. Even though the Ministry is responsible for developing transportation policy, the office refuses to comment on the regulation, saying that Georgian Railway should be addressed on the matter.

The Association Agreement is a mechanism for bringing Georgian legislation closer to EU laws. To do so, it requires numerous legislative amendments. But as it turns out, the company plans to implement some of the requirements in their internal regulations instead.

What Georgian Railway plans to do

Georgian Railway, a company providing services for passengers and transportation of goods is owned by The Partnership Fund, an investment fund owned by the state. It is a monolithic organisation which combines departments of finance, infrastructure, passengers’ transportation, traffic safety, and carriage of goods.

Irakli Saghirashvili, the head of operations at Georgian Railway, says that the company already started working on the implementation of the Regulation in 2015 and that they will present the plan to the Ministry by this summer. “The majority of requirements the Regulation details must be implemented internally, not in the law,” he says. “For example, the rights of the passengers.”

“In order to have passengers’ complaints, passengers’ rights should be defined. These rights have to be violated in order to appeal. Accordingly, we have to define these rights in the internal regulation and present it as a public offer. Appeals will be filed to the service provider,” Saghirashvili says.

Today Georgian Railway has no obligation to present reports on passengers’ transportation or on provision of relevant services. But the company notes that considering their business interests, they are willing to provide high quality service.

As Saghirashvili explains, the company plans to print passengers’ rights on the tickets. He says, he can recall only one accident, but even then they didn’t provide any compensation to passengers, as nobody had been seriously injured.

The company says that there is no independent regulatory body to investigate accidents on the railway, but they plan to discuss this with the Ministry.

“As for adapting railway infrastructure to the needs of people with disabilities, it is an on-going process, as the Railway always considers this issue when building new platforms,” Saghirashvili says. “It is beyond our power to do it all at once. The renewal of infrastructure requires big investments. For now, only central stations are adapted as well as Stadler and Chinese trains,” he explains.

Georgian Railway Workers New Trade Union is more critical of the situation. The head of the union, Vitali Giorgadze, says that railway infrastructure is mostly incompatible with modern standards as it has not changed much since the day it was designed.

“Stadler is designed for the European standard and is incompatible with our infrastructure. The train was expansive because of the comfort it can provide, but the company is unable to fully exploit it. Stadler cannot run full speed in Georgia because of the infrastructure,” says Giorgadze.

Directive on inland transportation of dangerous goods

The implementation of the Association Agreement is monitored by the office of the State Ministry of Georgia on European and Euro-Atlantic Integration. Another document Georgia has to partially implement this year is the Directive 2008/68/EC of European Parliament and of the Council on the inland transport of dangerous goods, office representatives say.

The Association Agreement was signed by Georgia in 2014. According to the document, the Directive requires all regulations concerning vehicles engaged in international transport to be implemented within three years of the entry into force of the Agreement. Regulations affecting vehicles engaged in national transport are to be affected within five years.

But it turns out, Georgian Railway has different information on the timeframe for the implementation of the Directive. Irakli Saghirashvili says, according to the official notice from the Ministry of Economy, the Directive must be implemented not by the end of this year, but by 2019. Georgian Railway is therefore not in a hurry.

The Directive on Inland transportation of dangerous goods draws attention to the risks of accidents during carriage of dangerous goods by rail and inland waterways. It provides precautions for such transport. According to information from the Ministry of Interior Affairs, zero violations were found regarding the rules on the carriage of such goods.

Dangerous goods are the kind of materials that can cause serious harm to the health of humans or the environment. The list includes explosives and easily flammable, poisonous or infectious, radioactive, and other materials.

When transporting dangerous goods, Georgian Railway follows the guidelines of the United Railroad Transport Board. This regulation is being used by ex-Soviet countries, which are members of the Railroad Community.

As for the inland carriage, Georgia follows the guidelines of the 2003 order of the Minister of Transport and Communications of Georgia on the rules of carriage of dangerous goods on rail.

Deputy Head of the Goods’ Transportation Department of the Georgian Railway, Temur Tvildiani says that EU countries use the standards supplied by the Convention concerning International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Rail (RID) as a guideline. The implementation of RID is also a requirement according to the regulation Georgia must enact. But today, as Tvildiani explains it, Georgia does not follow RID.

“We do not use RID because we are not connected to them by railroad. When the construction of Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is finished, we will be obliged to use this regulation because we are members of COTIF. But we are not working on it yet, because we are preparing legislation,” Tvildiani says.

According to the directive, “The ADR, RID, and ADN lay down uniform rules for the safe international transport of dangerous goods. Such rules should also be extended to national transport in order to harmonise across the Community the conditions under which dangerous goods are transported and to ensure the proper functioning of the common transport market.”

Georgian Railway Workers New Trade Union is critical of the practice of transporting dangerous goods in Georgia. As Vitali Giorgadze puts it, Georgian Railway has almost none of the warehouses or protection tools necessary for safely moving dangerous goods.

As he explains, Georgian Railway doesn’t follow special instructions and puts workers in danger. “It is not advisable to carry dangerous goods by rail in the region, because it is expensive. But in Georgia it is cheap to do it, due to the low turnover of goods,” explains Giorgadze.

“Turnover has decreased by 45% from 2012. We were able to refuse transporting dangerous goods 10 years ago, when there were many different kinds of goods to carry. But it is different now and the company is in a big loss. Thus, the company is forced to go for it,” says Giorgadze.

But Temur Tvildiani, who has been working in the field for 25 years, does not agree with the critics. He says, rail is one of the safest means of transporting dangerous goods.

Meanwhile, it seems the Government has handed over the completion of its obligations under the Association Agreement to Georgian Railway. The Ministry of Economy has no answers on what it plans to do for implementing the Regulation and the Directive. It seems, the Ministry will be using the guidelines provided by the company for implementing the Regulation on the rights of rail passengers. As for the carriage of dangerous goods, it is still unknown when to expect the Directive to be implemented, despite the fact that according to the Association Agreement, it has to be partially enforced by the end of this year.