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Romanian railway stations to get face-lifts

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Enjoying the last-minute snack at the Romanian railways station.

Investing in new locomotives, tracks and wagons.

Passangers will soon have warmer and safer railway station buildings.

EBRD loan blazes trail for private sector lender.

Big city dwellers take for granted the opportunity to buy last-minute hamburgers or travel bags of toiletries at railway stations just before hopping on trains. Unfortunately not all stations have handy little snack shops or offer travellers warm and pleasant places to read newspapers while waiting for trains. With a recent EBRD loan of €24 million to Caile Ferate Romane SA (CFR), over 1.5 million passengers in five Romanian cities are going to start and finish their journeys at cleaner, warmer, and more consumer-oriented railway stations.

"It is the first time the Bank's transport team invested in railway property," says Agnieszka Lukasik, operations leader on the Romanian project. "We invest in locomotives, tracks or wagons - we also did railway labour restructuring in Poland - but this time we worked with architects, something rather new for us," explains the banker.

CFR, a company managing and maintaining railway tracks and infrastructure in Romania, felt it was time to refurbish its major railway stations. The company asked the Bank for a loan, but the Ministry of Finance (the loan guarantor) wanted the project to be self-financing to the greatest extent possible.

"Together with experts from Italian Railways (funded by The Central European Initiative established by the Italian government) we reviewed CFR's rehabilitation plans and proposed improvements that would cut stations' operating costs and more than double their earning potential by providing space for new outlets for small retail businesses," recalls Paul Amos, deputy director of the Transport team, who spotted the potential for railway property rehabilitation in Romania.

At present most of the space at the five stations is used for offices. Typically there are only a few shops, some of which do not even pay rent. These issues had to be addressed, along with adjusting passenger flows at the stations to permit unobstructed access to the entrance, platforms and ticket machines.

Passengers in the cities of Cluj, Constanta, Craiova, Iasi and Timisoara will soon have a wider choice of shops and kiosks in freshly painted, warmer and safer railway station buildings. "That's because the Bank's Transport and Energy Efficiency teams worked together to improve the five stations," says Terry McCallion, a principal banker seconded from the Energy Efficiency team to work on this project.

"We used a small amount of donor funds to carry out an energy audit and address energy efficiency issues," said Mr McCallion. "This led to €3.25 million of investments in efficiency, safety and reliability of power supply. We recommended electric rewiring, more efficient use of the lighting systems and a safer power supply of bigger capacity." This really is a flagship project because CFR's more reliable and efficient energy management will benefit everybody involved. Passengers as well as railway and local shops staff will welcome safer, warmer and more comfortable railway stations. The company will save a lot of money by reducing electricity and heating costs and mitigating the risk of fire from over-used systems.

Recently CFR obtained a commercial loan from an American bank for renovating 20 local stations in other towns and cities in Romania by applying the project renovation concept prepared with the EBRD.

Contact: The EBRD Transport Team

13 June 2003