Traditionally, a new train schedule is introduced today, on the last Sunday of May, on the railways of Russia. The rules governing the running of passenger trains, commuter trains and freight trains are designed for one year and began to operate throughout the country from midnight Moscow time.

“The new schedule provides for 595 pairs (each pair is one round-trip direction) of long-distance trains, of which 494 pairs are domestic routes,” Russian Railways explained.

Also, 11 pairs of postal and baggage trains and 16 trains of the so-called “800th numbering”, that is, high-speed interregional express trains, will run on steel highways.

The new schedule provides for 87 routes to the CIS and Baltic countries, 14 to foreign countries. Among the latter, the representative of Russian Railways particularly noted the combined train 21/22 "Moscow-Prague", which included non-stop cars "Moscow-Amsterdam" and "Moscow-Basel", the acceleration of the daily train "Moscow-Sophia", as well as the change of routes of non-stop cars to Pyongyang and Tumangan.

In addition, in passenger traffic to the south in the direction of Anapa and Adler, the railways provided the opportunity to increase the number of cars in each of the following trains to 20-22, which is the maximum permissible. Special trains to the resorts of the south from many regions of the country have been introduced in the schedule, which will allow citizens living there to follow the rest without transfers.

There will be this summer and “seasonal” trains of the 400th and 500th numberings, the fare in which is traditionally cheaper than usual due to the lack of air conditioning in the cars. “If we talk about the summer campaign, we expect an increase in traffic in the direction of the resorts of Crimea: in the holiday period of this year, their growth should be 5-7%,” he said.

In the new schedule, the travel time of the fast train 1/2 "Capital Express" running on the route "Moscow-Kyiv-Moscow" is reduced by almost an hour. Passengers of the latter will be able to get from one capital to another faster due to changes in the customs and border control system, which will be carried out immediately before boarding and en route.

Especially for those who often travel on trains, railway operators this year promise to launch a loyalty program, created by analogy with those that are already successful in aviation. According to Russian Railways Vice President Mikhail Akulov, the pilot phase of the program will begin in June and will apply to trains 1/2 "Red Arrow" and 3/4 "Express", running between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Points for travel will be able to receive passengers who bought tickets for cars SV and Lux.