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.”
MINERAL DEPOSITS: The Pacific nation is looking for new foreign partners after its agreement with Canada’s Metals Co was terminated ‘mutually’ at the end of last year Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals. Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands. Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through. “The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
RSS