The Russian Railways (RZD) reform improved neither the quality nor the speed of freight transportation.
_The Russian government approved the railway reform program on May 18, 2001. In short, its slogan was efficiency in everything. It was expected that by 2010 a market for railway transport services would emerge, freight shipping costs would decline, and so on. According to RZD president Vladimir Yakunin, the situation on the railways is not improving. He wrote about this at the beginning of the year in a letter to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich. _
_... _
_More expensive every year _
Shippers' spending on rail transportation rises every year, says Burmistrov of Infoline Analytics. Lukoil’s costs of transporting oil to refineries (the company does not break out rail shipments separately) rose by 17% in 2012 to $1.24 billion, and by another 1.9% last year to $1.26 billion. Rosneft’s costs of shipping cargo by rail to refineries fell by 1.3% in 2012 to 3,790 rubles per ton, but in 2013 rose by 1% to 3,830 rubles per ton. Oil companies, however, have an alternative to rail transport—pipelines, Burmistrov notes.
Some shippers are switching from rail to road transport. As a result, the volume of shipments in covered railcars is declining, according to RZD statistics. Cement shipments fell by 8.4% to 5.8 million metric tons in the first quarter of this year, construction materials by 9.5% to 30.7 million metric tons, and non-ferrous metals by 6.7% to 4.6 million metric tons. Timber shipments did rise, however—by 11.7% to 9.9 million metric tons. Up to 10% of freight switches to road transport every year, an RZD employee says. Recently, Freight One and Federal Freight asked the railways, and Freight One also asked the Federal Tariff Service (FST), to standardize the tariff for shipping freight in covered railcars. The FST agreed. According to an employee of one of these companies, this will help win back some of the cargo.
It is worse for those who have no option to switch to other modes of transport, Burmistrov continues. He cites coal companies as an example: for instance, SUEK’s spending on transporting coal by rail rose by 7% in 2012 to $1.59 million.
http://www.vedomosti.ru/companies/news/26389441/kto-glavnyj-dispetcher
Can you recall even one reform that did not follow this standard script: everything got worse and more expensive, tariffs went up, and someone’s fur-coat vaults got richer.
Whether it is the energy sector, the army (reform and then reversal of the reform), the police (formerly the militsiya), the courts (reform and then reversal of the reform), or the formation of regional authorities (reform and then reversal of the reform).
It is the same everywhere.
The reasons are obvious, of course: reforms are carried out not to serve the public interest, but to strengthen the positions of the current managers of the institution being reformed and the officials overseeing the reform (read: their opportunities to steal).
But since the end result is always "worse and more expensive," it would be logical to assume that a figure like Putin would force at least one reform to be carried out properly, since that would align with the goal of strengthening his power. Nevertheless, that does not happen.
Most likely, the explanation is that alternative methods of consolidating power—state TV propaganda (literally, the “zombie box”), election rigging, and the repressive apparatus—are simpler, more accessible, easier to administer, and create the illusion of quick results.