Poland is witnessing a growing decline in punctuality rates of freight trains. In the second quarter of this year the average delay in minutes was almost 630 minutes, indicating a 16.6 per cent increase compared to the first quarter of 2018.

The numbers were released by the Office of Rail Transport (UTK) in Poland. Punctuality of rail freight transport dropped to 36 percent in Q2 from 38 percent in Q1, when the average delay in minutes was 540 minutes. Looking back at the first quarter of 2017, the average delay in minutes was 427 minutes, and the punctuality rate 42.4 per cent.

International traffic

Although not all statistics for this year were published by the UTK at this point, last year’s statistics indicate the state of affairs for international rail freight traffic. Whereas the punctuality of domestic traffic was 45.1 per cent in Q1, for international traffic this was 30.8 per cent. However, the number of international trains operated on the Polish network was 19,832, compared to 85,172 domestic trains.

In most cases the delay was long; 40.2 per cent of the total number of trains arrived at its destination op to 120 minutes later than expected, accounting for 42,201 trains. The delay of international trains is a common problem for the rail freight sector, especially for long-haul operations.