Russia’s first high-speed train, the Sapsan, has made life easier for well-heeled commuters after its launch but sparked a hate campaign from ordinary people living along the route.
To vent their rage at the train, which travels between Moscow and the former imperial capital of Saint Petersburg in just three hours and 45 minutes, residents have thrown stones and even fired shots in at least 14 attacks, according to Russian Railways (RZD).
In January, a resident of Leontyevo, a village in the Tver region, threw a block of ice at a carriage, breaking a window.
The man responsible told police he decided to damage the train after he was knocked off his feet with a blast of air as it sped past at 250kph.
The new high-speed train — which runs along ordinary tracks — represents a particular danger because in Russia the tracks are not fenced off and are used by many rural residents as footpaths.
Four people have been knocked down by the Sapsan since its inception in December last year, a senior interior ministry official said last week in comments reported by Fontanka.ru, a Saint Petersburg news Web site.
The train moves almost silently at high speed and people often take shortcuts across the railway rather than using inconveniently placed level crossings, said Alexander Brevnov, the deputy head of the interior ministry’s transport law enforcement department.
“The transport minister [Igor] Levitin has called for Sapsan to be fully isolated from other railway tracks. I fully agree with him,” Brevnov said.
The Sapsan — which means Peregrine Falcon in Russian — was launched with the aim of catapulting Russia’s vast railway network into the era of high-speed rail travel.
The dashing white and red German-made trains are a marked contrast to the green carriages that have traditionally carried travelers across Russia on lumbering sleeper trains.
“I have seen bunches of flowers left along the tracks in memory of two people killed due to Sapsan,” said Tatyana Khrolenko, 70, who has a country cottage outside Saint Petersburg.
The numbers of those killed on the tracks in Russia are already extraordinarily high — 2,953 people died last year and 1,494 were injured, according to RZD. The launch of the Sapsan also led to cuts in local train services that criss-cross the route, making it harder for people living in the region to travel to work and dachas, or seasonal homes.
Earlier this month, two men were arrested after they shot at the train with an air rifle, while in January, a stone was thrown through a carriage window as the train passed through the Tver region.
Blogger “aart” complained that he arrived at a station in the Moscow suburb of Skhodnya with his child and found out that three local trains had been removed from the schedules.
“We had to wait an hour and a half in the cold,” he wrote. “Both of us fell ill. Next time if I see the Sapsan approaching, I will pick up a stone.” Many locals are resentful of the sleek ultra-modern train, whose tickets priced at up to US$230 for a first class seat are well out of the reach of most rural residents.
“The Sapsan is obviously a train for the elite,” Khrolenko complained.
“No one thinks of those who live between Moscow and Saint Petersburg and who also need to travel,” she said. “Of course throwing stones is barbarous, but it’s the only way for people to show their discontent.”
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS