The specialised forum on passenger transport issues, “Passenger Forum 2011”, took place on 29 March 2011. The organisers of the event were Business Dialogue and the Argumenty i Fakty publishing house. The strategic partner was Russian Railways. More than 250 people took part in the forum.

Gennady Petrakov, head of Roszheldor, delivered a message of greetings to those taking part in the event on behalf of Minister of Transport Igor Levitin at the opening of “Passenger Forum 2011”. Mikhail Akulov, vice president of RZD and managing director of the Federal Passenger Company, said that for transport to work effectively and to provide a comfortable journey, harmonious development of the transport system was required. Participation in the work of the forum was regarded by the RZD holding company as an important step in increasing the quality of interaction between all participants in the transport market, noted Mikhail Akulov.

Mikhail Akulov spoke during the plenary session, entitled “A strategy for the development of passenger transportation in Russia”, noting that RZD is developing a “Concept for organising faster high-speed passenger railway transport during the 2018 football World Cup”, in order to provide passenger transport between the cities where matches are being held. Akulov mentioned that one of the projects being planned is to organise high-speed rail transport between Moscow and St Petersburg, on the Nizhny Novgorod to Kazan route and on a number of other routes. “The concept will be ready for discussion in June,” added vice president of RZD. Mr Akulov also noted that in order to create the maximum comfort for passengers and to reduce journey times, it would be necessary to create a single regional transport area by organising ground-based public transport approach routes to transport interchanges on the railway with synchronised electric train transport. Moreover, Mr Akulov noted that the passing of the federal law “On direct mixed (combined) transport” will create the opportunity to transport passengers on a single transport document, which will be a tremendous integrating opportunity for all types of transport and will increase the level of passenger comfort on the journey.

A press conference with Mikhail Akulov took place as part of the forum. During the press conference Mr Akulov reported that Russian Railways is planning to launch a Russian train on the Moscow – Berlin – Paris route in December 2011. He noted that in the initial stage the train will consist of RIC scale wagons, and that in the future it is planned to launch the Talgo train on this route. The introduction of Talgo trains will make it possible to take the Moscow – Berlin train to the north of Germany or the south of Europe. It is planned that the train will run on the Moscow – Berlin – Paris route a minimum of three times per week and a maximum of five times. The RZD vice president also said that the journey time for the train has currently been agreed with the European partners as 41 hours, but that in the near future it is planned to “bring it within 40 hours”.

Speaking in the discussion on “Transport safety”, Alexei Morozov, lead engineer with the Security Company, said that a new area of business for his company was screening equipment. In his report A. Morozov presented personal screening with the use of millimetre waves, noting that this type of screening is safe for people.

Vitaly Poltoratsky, director of product and service development services for M2M Telematics, delivered a report on the subject of the application of Glonass technologies in railway transport security measures. With the aid of these technologies, said V, Poltoratsky, the following aims could be pursued: monitoring of passenger and special freight transport by road and rail, and monitoring of the state of transport infrastructure facilities.

Yuri Karadjev, business development manager for IBM in Russia, spoke in the discussion on “Tariffs and quality of service”. He said that by using a yield management system it was possible to significantly increase the total number of passengers carried. The main themes of his talk were: features of yield management in rail transport, possible ways of fulfilling existing objectives in yield management, and yield management in the context of regulation.

Alexander Lomakin-Rumyantsev, deputy of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation and chairman of the Russian Society of People with Disabilities, delivered a report at “Passenger Forum 2011” on the issue of access to public transport for disabled people today. He noted that the Russian Society of Invalids is pinning particular hopes on the new state programme, “An accessible environment” for 2011 to 2015. As part of the programme both regional and municipal authorities must implement a range of important measures to reorganise passenger transport to ensure comfortable travel for disabled people. This reorganisation programme should become a permanent work, added Alexander Lomakin-Rumyantsev.

More than 100 different companies took part in the forum. They included representatives of such state organisations as the Russian Society of People with Disabilities, the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, the Main Transport Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Moscow metro, the Ministry of Regional Development of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation, the Russian Ministry of Economic Development, the Federal Passenger Company, the Federal Transport Supervision Service, the Russian Federal Tariff Service and the Federal Agency for Railway Transport.

The participants in the discussion included representatives of the commercial organisations Air Berlin, Air Berlin(NIKI), Facilicom, IBM in Russia, PricewaterhouseCoopers Russia B.V., TransCreditBank, VTB Capital and many others.

The forum was reported by leading Russian media, such as VGTRK, Vedomosti, the Izvestiya newspaper, Interfax, ITAR-TASS, Kommersant FM, Kommersant-Vlast, PRIME-TASS, RBK-TV, RIA Novosti, City FM, the Expert TV Channel, TRVK Moskovia and others.