ZAGREB, October 1, 2019 - Minister of Maritime Affairs, Transport and Infrastructure Oleg Butković, addressing a conference on Tuesday marking the 150th anniversary of the start of construction of the Zagreb - Rijeka railway line, announced that about €3.5 billion would be invested by 2030 in the reconstruction and construction of the railway infrastructure.

Opening a business forum, Butković said that the Zagreb-Rijeka railway had a lot of potential even today and that the development of the railway infrastructure was one of the main preconditions to achieve the full potential of the port of Rijeka. He said that an estimated €3.5 billion would be invested by 2030 in the reconstruction and construction of Croatia's railway infrastructure.

He recalled that in the 1990s railway freight transport accounted for 90% of transport at the Rijeka port but with the construction of the motorway a part of freight transport was redirected and now railway freight at the port accounts for about 25% of turnover. Today more than ever it is necessary to change those statistics, he said adding that the transport strategy has recognised the potential of the Zagreb-Rijeka railway line for freight transport and that the European Commission too has recognised the potential of railway freight transport and has financed the construction of several railway lines in Croatia, listing several railway infrastructure projects.

Primorje-Gorski Kotar County Prefect Zlatko Komadina said that it was necessary to embark on strategic projects as soon as possible, while Rijeka Mayor Vojko Obersnel commented on the poor state of the Rijeka passenger railway station considering that next year Rijeka would be the European Capital of Culture and that it was necessary to construct a railway line to modern standards.

"This has been talked about for decades and I hope that the time has come for us all to get to work. I have warned on several occasions that the railway station needs to be reconstructed and hope that will be done soon," the mayor said.

Butković said that money for the railway station had been secured and that two tenders had been advertised, but the bids were significantly higher than the estimated value of the project. He added that a new tender would be advertised soon with corrected prices and that he hoped contracts would be signed before the end of the year.

More transport news can be found in the Business section.

It is free, accurate like a Swiss clock, and saves time to people who usually spend half an hour or more a day waiting for their trains. The mobile app in question is HŽPP Planer, thanks to which with just a few clicks on a mobile phone passengers can see the GPS position of the train they are waiting for, when the train will arrive and how much will the trip cost them. The app has more than 42,000 downloads on Google Play and was designed by a third-year student of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing Josip Šalković. Thanks to the success of his software, he has recently established cooperation with the Croatian Railways company, which promotes his app on its website, reports Večernji List on January 12, 2019.

“The main goal of the app is for no one to have to wait for the train for more than a few minutes because now they know where the train is at any moment. And we all know how much our trains like to abide by the timetables,” said Šalković laughingly. His GPS tracking system for trains is the first such system in Croatia.

How does it work? The HŽPP Planer app downloads the GPS data in real-time from the central data network of the Croatian Railways. Instead of showing a map with the exact position of the train, the app tells the passenger near what station the train is currently located and at what speed it is moving, calculating how much time the train will need to reach the passenger’s station.

“The HŽPP Planer app covers the whole national rail traffic. It does not matter whether a person is travelling from Zagreb to Dugo Selo or from Osijek to Rijeka or Split. The app will ‘find’ the train and tell them everything they are interested in,” Šalković pointed out.

The GSP system and the timetable overview are just some of the information given to users, since the application also notifies the users about construction works, navigates them during the trip, and tells them at which station they should leave the train. It explains where and how to change trains if needed and informs them about any inevitable delays. People who are particularly curious can enter the code of the train to check whether it is an older or a newer model and see the photos of its interior. The app calculates the ticket price in both directions, including discounts if the traveller is a student or a pensioner. In addition to searching within the app, timetables can be downloaded to your phone and viewed even when you are not online.

“This is especially useful to people who travel by train every day to work or university because their life depends on the timetables,” said Josip, who often travels from Zagreb, where he lives, to Karlovac, where he comes from. That is why he came up with the idea to develop the HžZPP Planer app in the first place.

More news on the Croatian Railways can be found in our Travel section.

Translated from Večernji List (reported by Hana Ivković).

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