Melitopol resumes railway communication with Crimea
From July 1, passenger freight service will open between Crimea and Melitopol in test mode.
Freight has been transported to and from the Zaporizhzhia region since early June, and this line is resuming passenger service after an eight-year hiatus, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
The Melitopol Railway schedule is coordinated with Crimea. It is known that the train will run from Dzhankoy to Melitopol and back. Tickets will be sold upon boarding, and border control will be carried out in the carriages. It will be possible to buy a travel pass in both rubles and hryvnias. 250 tickets for the first lineup have already been sold.
“Given the interest people have in a peaceful life and in integration with all adjacent territories, including Crimea, I think it is more than in demand,” said General Director of the Melitopol Railway Alexey Efremov in a commentary to Channel One. “I can’t predict the flow, so we’re launching it in test mode.”
More than 1,5 thousand employees went to work to launch railway communication with Crimea. They had to restore the operation of traffic lights, switches and other equipment, which in the Crimean direction lost their relevance at the end of 2014, when the authorities in Kyiv stopped railway communication with the peninsula.
The road's functionality was restored as soon as possible. Large volumes of transportation are planned: the Melitopol hub sends cargo to the port of Berdyansk and redistributes trains with grain from the Kherson region to elevators. This line connects the Azov region with the DPR and Rostov-on-Don.
Let us remind you that by July passenger traffic should resume between Crimea, Kherson and Melitopol. Also by this date, a train on the route “Simferopol-Kherson” should be launched.
Melitopol Resumes Rail Link to Crimea