Road or rail transportation: what to choose?

In a healthy competition between railways and road transport, there is a fairly established practice of distributing transportation by distance. Valeriy Tkachev, Deputy Director of the Department of Transportation Technology and Commercial Work of JSC “Ukrzaliznytsia”, told about this in his column for Agrotimes.
According to him, if the distance of transportation does not exceed 250-300 km, it is more profitable to use road transport. Longer distances will definitely be cheaper to transport by rail.
Mr. Tkachev emphasized that each mode of transportation has its advantages and disadvantages. In particular, road transport is more mobile than rail transport, it depends on weather conditions, but it is not able to provide large volumes of transportation in a short time, and it has higher costs for loading and unloading operations.
Railways, on the other hand, transport large volumes of cargo on schedule in any weather, while the speed of trains is lower than that of road transport.
“A well-functioning transportation system creates conditions for the development of all modes of transport and removes non-competitive conditions,” added Valeriy Tkachev.