29/7 Tass 317
MOSCOW, July 29 (Itar-Tass) —— Direct railroad traffic has resumed between Moscow and Sukhumi.
A Moscow-Alder train with eight cars routed for Abkhazia departed from the Moscow Paveletsky Railroad Terminal at 5:20 p.m. The passengers will cover the distance of 2,072 kilometers within 44 hours and reach Sukhumi on Sunday afternoon.
Many passengers told Itar-Tass that the route had become much more convenient. “In the past we had to travel to Sochi before reaching Sukhumi by bus or by commuter train,” Muscovite Alexei said. He said he was making frequent business trips to Abkhazia. Another two passengers, Yegor and Stanislav, said they were glad the train had two cars with cheaper tickets.
The train will have six second-class sleepers and two third-class cars at first, Russian Railroads said. A first-class car will be added to the train on August 21. The train will make stops in Lipetsk, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don and Krasnodar, which will link these cities directly to Abkhazia.
Tickets are available at all ticket offices and online. It costs 2,714 rubles and 30 kopecks to travel to Abkhazia on a third-class car, and 4,935 rubles 30 kopecks to travel on a second-class car. The traffic will be daily until October 18, and trains will be available on odd days of the week from October 19 through 31. Trains will travel once in four days, on even days of the week, from November 4 through December 12, and the traffic will become daily again from December 23, 2011, through January 12, 2012. There will be trains once in four days on even days of the week from January 14, 2012, through May 27, 2012.
“The schedule complies with the seasonal passenger traffic to the Black Sea coast,” Russian Railroads said.
There was direct train tariff between Moscow and Sukhumi before this February, but the traffic was suspended for the period of modernization of the Abkhaz railroad on a stretch from the Russian border station Vesyoloye to Sukhumi. More than 130 kilometers of the railroad track were repaired within three months.
The daily commuter train service between Alder and Sukhumi opened on July 1. The traveling time is five hours, with eight stops.