Traffic safety improvements in GYSEV railway network2012. március 21.
GYSEV Zrt. won close to one billion forints from the funds of the New Széchenyi Plan for traffic safety improvement projects. The project support contract was signed in Sopron on 28 February 2012. In his speech, Zoltán Schváb, Deputy Secretary of State for Transport, emphasised that the New Széchenyi Plan will allocate approximately 50 billion forints to traffic safety improvement projects, ranked according to the recommendations of railway and road management companies.
GYSEV Zrt. will spend altogether 982.6 million forints on installing flap-bar barriers at several railway crossings, replacing its light signal bulbs with more visible LEDs of higher light power, and deploying camera surveillance systems to deter vandalism. It will also operate equipment along the tracks to monitor railway vehicles in operation (recording vehicle mass, wheel temperature, and freight position). The railway company will implement the planned developments by the end of next year.
Mr Schváb also mentioned that GYSEV implemented several significant projects recently from tender funds within the New Széchenyi Plan. It completed the renovation of a 116 km track section between Sopron and Szentgotthárd in last October. This complex project worth close to 50 billion forints completed the modernization of the entire Hungarian section of the Vienna-Sopron-Szombathely-Szentgotthárd-Graz corridor. The recently inaugurated intermodal node at Körmend was created by GYSEV in cooperation with Vasi Volán Zrt. as a consortium, using 105 million forints of support.
In addition to the railway company, the city of Sopron has also achieved major results in terms of using development funds. The city has won a total of 77.3 billion forints of subsidy for 275 of its proposals since 2007. In addition to the modernization of the railway line of Sopron-Szombathely-Szentgotthárd, infrastructure developments at Western Hungarian University and the establishment of the regional waste management system are also key large-scale projects.
The Deputy Secretary of State recalled that this was the first occasion when targeted funds were allocated within the New Széchenyi Plan at the ministry’s initiative for infrastructure developments aimed to prevent accidents involving personal injuries and for traffic safety interventions. In the national traffic safety programme of an unprecedented scale, the State Motorway Management Company, the Hungarian Public Road Management Company and Hungarian State Railways each prepared a package to the tune of 12 billion forints for the public road and railway networks under their management. The proposals presented include interventions planned at the accident nodes, traffic control investments, installation of passive safety equipment, as well as safety improvement projects to be implemented at pedestrian crossings, railway crossings and on motorways.
Source: Ministry of National Development