Railway traffic is considered by far the safest and most efficient way of transporting people and goods. The economic success of a country is primarily reflected in a high-quality transport infrastructure, in which railway transport is a significant part of it.
What about railway network of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)?
Today, we have a total length of 1,032.7 kilometers of railways, of which 608.5 kilometers are in the Federation of BiH (FBiH), and 424.2 kilometers in the Republika Srpska (RS) entity.
With the abolition of narrow-gauge railways, the length of railways in BiH has been reduced by about 580 km or 36 percent compared to the situation a hundred or more years ago.
It is more than absurd that investment in BiH‘s railways is becoming negligible compared to the region. There is no need to waste words on European and world trends.
Since the war, not a single new section of the railway has been built, and the existing ones are being modernized slowly and poorly maintained. The reason for this lies both in the absence of adequate financial and any other support from the state, and in the absence of a clear vision of railway management structures.
It is clear that the sluggishness of BiH‘s politicians, both past and present, is the only reason for the underdevelopment of our railway network.
The topic of modernization of railways in BiH was once again brought up to date by the State Minister of Communications and Transport, Edin Forto, who recently assessed that the revitalization and electrification of existing railways in BiH, as well as the establishment of new routes, must be a priority of his ministry’s work in the coming period.
Who is stopping these projects?
Speaking about capital investments, Forto emphasized that it is equally important that BiH, in addition to building roads, also starts working on the revitalization and construction of railways.
Last year, an initiative was launched for the establishment of a new railway on the Sarajevo-Zagreb route that would go via Banja Luka, for which no common language or, rather, interest was found.
The Railways of the FBiH and the Railways of the RS have expressed their desire to implement this project, but it seems that the problem lies with the “third party”, i.e. Croatian Railways.
