The Railway System of Bosnia and Herzegovina Connectivity, neglect and chances
Master’s thesis
For the award of the academic degree of Master of Arts in History of South-Eastern Europe at the University of Graz
Submitted by Florian Supe BA BA MA
Supervisor: Dr.phil. Armina Galijaš, M.A. Centre for South-East European Studies Graz, 2021
Content
Preface ...... 3 1. Introduction ...... 4 1.1 Structure and methodology ...... 5 1.2 State of research and overview of used sources ...... 7 1.3 Studying railway links – a theoretical framework ...... 13 2. Shifting connectivity – Railway links as indicator of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s political and economic ties up until 1992 ...... 23 2.1. Ottoman rule ...... 23 2.2. Austro-Hungarian rule ...... 26 2.3. Inter-war Yugoslavia ...... 38 2.4. Socialist Yugoslavia ...... 45 2.5. Internal and inter-republican railway connections of BiH on the eve of the Yugoslav Wars 56 2.6. Summary...... 63 3. Reconstruction and neglect – The loss of importance of the Bosnian Herzegovinian railway since 1996 ...... 66 3.1. Organisation of the railway system in BiH with a stakeholder analysis ...... 70 3.2. Immediate remedy and hesitant further reconnection (1996–2002) ...... 72 3.3. Stagnation, abandonment and new investment (2003–2020) ...... 81 3.4. Political, economic and societal frame conditions ...... 100 3.5. Summary...... 118 4. A railway revival in Bosnia and Herzegovina – Chances, arguments and requirements ...... 121 4.1. Flaws in traditional transport policy and arguments for the railway as focal point in BH transport investment ...... 121 4.2. Requirements for and impediments to a passenger railway revival in BiH ...... 129 4.3. Summary...... 134 5. Conclusion ...... 136 Annexe ...... 140 Abbreviations ...... 140 Interview Questions ...... 141 Bibliography ...... 142
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Preface
I do not recall playing with toy trains as a child (neither with toy cars, for that matter). My fascination for transport infrastructure, for coloured lines on folding maps that ramify, cross landscapes and effortlessly pierce national borders, developed rather in the wake of my growing personal mobility in late adolescence. The possibility to reach other, distant places within a predetermined period of time, simply by boarding a train coach, is a privilege made possible by political cooperation and an appropriate use of financial resources. In the transport sector of Bosnia and Herzegovina, both of these factors have been deficient for nearly three decades, leading to a marginalisation of rail-bound traffic. This thesis is published in the European Year of Rail, at a time when the mainstreaming of climate policy and the increasing awareness for the external costs of road transport make the railway seem as seminal as in the era of its invention 200 years ago. Simultaneously, the concepts of travelling in general and public transport in particular are weighed down by the coronavirus pandemic, which also influenced my own working process. As the COVID-19 restrictions prevented the conduction of my initially planned field research, I was forced to adapt the methodology and limit myself to remotely accessible sources. I dedicate this work to my mother, who supports me in all my endeavours, and to all railway enthusiasts in South-Eastern Europe who keep the memory of former connectivity alive through their tireless fascination expressed in blogs and online forums. Also, I would like to thank the PR department of the Republika Srpska railway company which compiled my most important source on railway connections in post-socialist Bosnia and Herzegovina; my interview partners Štefica Galić, Miodrag Živanović, Tihomir Dakić and Dragan Kabić; and my proofreaders Carina, Iona, Saul and Ariane.
Florian Supe, April 2021
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1. Introduction
Transport is a decisive factor in integration processes, working as “a `bloodstream’ of every country” and being “the main prerequisite for [the] development of other economic activities”,1 as the Bosnian Herzegovinian geographer Đuro Marić states. The connectivity of a certain space through its transport infrastructure thus poses an important reason for studying it. A particularly fertile study field for matters of political, economic and social (dis)integration is Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) with its eventful modern history. The railway, with 150 years of presence on the ground, its relative stability and an abundance of source material, allows to write a transport history of BiH that also sheds a new light on a variety of continuities and fractures in the development of the Bosnian Herzegovinian (BH) space. The latest of those fractures, the war in the 1990s, represents the division between the two big chapters of this thesis: a longer period when the railway played a central, though diminishing role in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a shorter, still lasting period when its role was peripheral or even insignificant. Between 1992 and 1995, much of the existing railway infrastructure in the republic was devastated. This, next to adversarial political relations, financial straits and the focus on other infrastructural priorities, led to the fact that two and a half decades after the restoration of peace by the Dayton Agreement, it is not possible to approach any of BiH’s major cities by train from neighbouring Croatia, Serbia or Montenegro. In the post-socialist period, some of the formerly existing inter-republican (today international) connections had been revived for a couple of years, but none of them survived the competition by road traffic and airplanes, the lack of investment power in the outdated railway infrastructure due to the prioritisation of motorways, the unwillingness to cooperate over ethnic and national boundaries and the political indifference to the railway. Within BiH, however, recent years showed steadily rising investment in the railway sector that, if continued and prioritised over road infrastructure, could restore former railway connectivity and subsequently the societal and economic importance of the train. My thesis outlines the long-term development of the BH railway network from the 1870s until 2020, analyses it as a physical manifestation of political and economic ties and aspirations and
1 Đuro Marić, “Corridor Vc as a Factor of Integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina into the European Union,” Zbornik radova Geografskog instituta "Jovan Cvijić" SANU 62 (2012): 89, https://www.ceeol.com/search/article- detail?id=578137 (accessed January 2, 2021). 4
scrutinises the dramatic loss of importance that it suffered especially since the end of socialist Yugoslavia. Moreover, I shall give a brief outlook for the chances that a resurrection of the railway offers to the transport profile of the region. This endeavour manifests itself by three research questions: Firstly, how did the railway connectivity of Bosnia and Herzegovina evolve through time and how does it relate to the political and economic (dis)integration of spaces? Secondly, what are the reasons for the loss of the BH railway’s significance from the 1960s until today? Finally, what are the main arguments and requirements for its reanimation?
1.1 Structure and methodology
An interdisciplinary approach is used to answer the research questions: the strong historical grounding is complemented by input from political, economic, sociologic and transport scientific perspectives especially in the latter chapters. Following the introductory Chapter 1, which establishes the theoretical background for the research body, the thesis is split into three main parts: Chapter 2 traces the development of the BH railway system from its foundational period in the latter third of the 19th century through the times of Austro-Hungarian rule, inter-war Yugoslavia and socialist Yugoslavia until 1992. The chapter ends with a line-up of all railway connections of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the year 1990, shortly before the dissolution of Yugoslavia began. In this first part, I concentrate on the constructional history and outline the development of the railway scheme against the background of the economic and political needs and possibilities of the respective periods. The chapter is mostly based on scholarly literature; reliable information from railway forums and primary sources like maps and railway guidebooks complete the used sources. In methodological terms, I place discrete historical information in a broader spatial and temporal frame which allows to make statements about the development of transport connectivity. The sources providing evidence about single events and short-term changes are analysed as contributions to a centennial history of expansion and loss of connectivity according to Fernand Braudel’s model of a histoire conjoncturelle (see Chapter 1.3). The first research question about the changes in BH railway connectivity and the (dis)integration of spaces serves as the main guideline for this chapter; the section about socialist Yugoslavia, however, also already provides the basis for the answering of the second question about the loss of the BH railway’s significance. For two reasons, usage and demolition
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of the railway infrastructure in the World Wars and in the Bosnian War are omitted: on the one hand, my focus on long- and medium-term developments entails that the importance of transformational periods with high transport instability is limited to their consequences for connectivity. Those consequences are dealt with in the sections that cover the aftermath of wars. On the other hand, especially the analysis of the role of the railway in the latter war would have required a different methodological approach which could not be conducted with the accessible sources. After this stock overview of historical routes and their contextualisation, Chapter 3 deals with the development of the Bosnian Herzegovinian railway system since 1996. At first, an introduction to its organisational structure is presented, followed by a thorough examination of the post-war2 reconstruction process, the revival and abandonment of routes and recent new investment in infrastructure. Finally, the immense loss of railway passenger connectivity in comparison to the late socialist period is analysed as one of the reasons for the societal downturn of the railway in BiH. In this chapter, the first and the second research question serve likewise as analytical guidelines. It is based on scholarly literature, information retrieved from online media or provided by the BH railway companies and, additionally, on qualitative interviews conducted with BH citizens and transport experts. In this chapter, a mixture of methods is applied. Based on the sources indicating restoration and new decline of railway connectivity, a temporal comparison of quantitative and qualitative connectivity traits is conducted. In accordance with Paul Virilio (see Chapter 1.3), the time needed to overcome distances is scrutinised as one of the key traits. Methodologically, the sources used in Chapters 3.2 and 3.3 are perceived as evidence for the outcome of processes of coordination between stakeholders, a feature that Karl Schlögel ascribes to railway guidebooks (see Chapter 1.3). The processes themselves, however, cannot be traced in detail. In section 3.4, four oral history interviews find use. They are analysed with regard to the sociological assumption that transport connections strongly influence the perception of people’s living spaces that is made in Chapter 1.3 based on Michel de Certeau. The suggestions by the two interviewees that also speak as transport experts, in addition, contribute to the
2 In my work, the term “inter-war“ always refers to the timespan between the two World Wars, while „post-war“ applies – with regard to BiH – to the period since 1995 and not, as usually in the European context, to the period after 1945. 6
body of sources about coordination processes in transport connectivity. Lastly, also the interpretation of transport statistics is used. As a whole, the applied methods and methodologies do not only allow for the scrutinisation of historic developments, but also for a qualified assessment of the contemporary railway system in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the context of wider political and economic frame conditions. Chapter 4, the final part of the research body, is directed at answering the third research question about the main arguments and requirements for a railway revival in BiH and has a smaller extent than the previous two parts. It constitutes the intersection between the status quo of the Bosnian Herzegovinian transport system and its possible future, with an emphasis on a reanimation of the rail passenger sector. At first, arguments for a concentration of investment on the railway are derived from the examination of the environmental and societal consequences of the current BH transport system. Due to the lack of country-specific studies for BiH, the used method comprises the establishment of generally applicable considerations on transport externalities by linking data from various case studies from other spaces to universal findings from transport planning. Thereafter, the established reasons for the present neglect of the railway by Bosnian Herzegovinian passengers are enmeshed with transport theory to outline both the requirements for a sustained modal shift from road to rail and the obstructions inherent in the BH and European transport policy to achieve such a shift.
1.2 State of research and overview of used sources
The scope of scholarly work on the railway in Bosnia and Herzegovina is strongly dependent on the time frame in question, with a tendency from relative abundance regarding the 19th century towards a nearly total lack of scientific sources since the late 1990s. The beginning of railway planning through BiH in the context of Austro-Hungarian imperialism and the vivid construction work after its annexation by Vienna and Budapest is thoroughly examined owing to the rich archival residues of the monarchy’s administrative activities. Due to its economic and military importance, the topic was not only subject to political pamphlets (e.g. by Bernhard Singer),3 but soon attracted scholarly interest as well. Already in 1898,
3 See: Bernhard Singer, Unsere Eisenbahn-Anschlüsse Nach Südosten Und Süden: Vom Wirthschaftlichen Standpuncte Besprochen. (Vienna: Gerold, 1879), http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ26238200X (accessed December 4, 2020). 7
Hermann Strach released an extensive “History of the Railways of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy” in four tomes. Here, Friedrich Žežula devoted a chapter to the strategic issues, executed building activities and economic problems regarding the Bosnian Herzegovinian railway.4 These books, however, follow the imperialist agenda of the time. A lot of further work on the Habsburg time was published from the 1970s to the 1990s by Austrian and (post-)Yugoslav scholars, among others by Kurt Wessely,5 Peter Jordan,6 Dževad Juzbašić7 and Ferdinand Hauptmann.8 However, because of the abundance of side and forest lines9 built in the Habsburg period and the large share of private lines among them,10 there is no complete description of the railway scheme; information on its total length differs among sources. Regarding minor routes, Elmar Oberegger’s web page on the railway history of Austria-Hungary is of great value, offering the most thorough map of the state-owned pre- World-War-I system.11 The fate of the railway in monarchist inter-war Bosnia is much more scarcely examined. The reasons are both a lack of primary sources and little construction activity in comparison to the periods before and after. Kemal Hrelja’s article on industry and traffic in BiH from 196612 is
Similar original sources from the Hungarian perspective cannot be considered in this thesis due to the language barrier. 4 See: Friedrich Žežula, “Die Eisenbahnen Im Occupations-Gebiete,” in Geschichte der Eisenbahnen der Österr.- Ungar. Monarchie, ed. Hermann Strach, 4 vols., 563–84 3 (Vienna, Ciescyn, Leipzig: Karl Prochaska K.u.K Hofbuchhandlung & K.u.K. Hofdruckerei, 1898). 5 See: Kurt Wessely, “Die Wirtschaftliche Entwicklung Von Bosnien-Herzegowina,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918: Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung, ed. Alois Brusatti, 528–66, Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918 1 (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1973). 6 See: Peter Jordan, “Die Entwicklung Des Eisenbahnnetzes Auf Dem Gebiet Des Heutigen Jugoslawien (Bis 1918),” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, ed. Richard Plaschka, Anna Drabek and Brigitta Zaar, 13–30, Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für die Geschichte Österreichs 19 (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1993). 7 See: Dževad Juzbašić, “Der Eisenbahnbau in Bosnien-Herzegowina Und Die Wirtschaftlichen Gegensätze Zwischen Österreich Und Ungarn,” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, ed. Richard Plaschka, Anna Drabek and Brigitta Zaar, Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für die Geschichte Österreichs 19 (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1993). 8 See: Ferdinand Hauptmann, Die Österreichisch-Ungarische Herrschaft in Bosnien Und Der Hercegovina 1878– 1918: Wirtschaftspolitik Und Wirtschaftsentwicklung (Graz, 1983). 9 The terms “side lines” and “forest lines” refer to sole freight haulage routes that were built to link factories or timberlands in exploitation to the mainlines. 10 Alfred Horn points out that there was “an abundance of […] mostly private forest lines […] with hardly any documents about them. Sometimes routes were marked in maps, in the following year they were missing.” Alfred Horn, Die Bahnen in Bosnien Und Der Herzegowina (Vienna, 1964), 59. Cited after Elmar Oberegger, “Bosnisch- Herzegowinische Eisenbahnen,”, http://www.oberegger2.org/enzyklopaedie/bihb.htm (accessed December 3, 2020). 11 See: Elmar Oberegger, Das Offizielle Netz Von Bosnien-Herzegowina Im Jahre 1910 (2011), http://www.oberegger2.org/altoesterreich/exkurs.htm (accessed August 26, 2020). 12 See: Kemal Hrelja, “Industrija I Saobraćaj U Bosni I Hercegovini 1929.–1941. Godine,” Prilozi, no. 2 (1966). 8
outstanding in its focus on both the region and timespan, as the developments in the railway sector on BH ground in the royal decades are mostly covered in the frame of a wider geographical or temporal context. Smiljana Đurović touches upon the topic from the perspective of political and economic integration of Yugoslavia,13 Noel R. Malcolm mentions it in his “Short History of Bosnia and Herzegovina”14, Alen Zečević notes the most important facts as a prehistory to his article focussing on the 1940s and 1950s.15 The lack of comprehensive scholarly descriptions is partly compensated by information from local web portals about the history of Bosnian Herzegovinian towns. The big railway projects in the first years of socialist BiH have been subject to detailed research by Zečević, especially those that were constructed within the framework of “youth work actions” and lay at the heart of titoist Yugoslav self-conception. Little has been published in the scientific realm, however, on the further fate of the BH railway sector and its worsening structural problems. Danijel Kežić’s dissertation about the centennial project of the Yugoslav Belgrade–Bar route does not provide material about Bosnia and Herzegovina specifically, but offers a valuable description of the economic difficulties and restrictions that the railway faced in the less developed republics of the socialist federation, most of which also applies to BiH.16 Other scholars devoted their writings to Yugoslav railway economics as well, without focussing on a special region: with a certain ideological slant, Bronislav Šupica processes technical and administrative advancements in a miscellany on the railway in various socialist countries,17 while Oleg Zinam gives a comprehensive evaluation of the rivalry between car and train in the Yugoslav transport system until 1980 in his contribution to an anthology on “East European Transport Regions and Modes”.18 The book also features a utile article on cultural and economic considerations about the passenger car in socialist planned economies.19
13 See: Smiljana Đurović, “Problemi Ekonomske Integracije Jugoslavije 1918 - 1941. Godine,” Istorija 20. veka 1-2 (1993). 14 See: Noel R. Malcolm, Bosnia: A Short History (New York: New York University Press, 1994). 15 See: Alen Zečević, “Izgradnja Željezničkog Saobraćaja U Socijalističkoj Republici Bosni I Hercegovini,” Gracanicki glasnik - Casopis za kulturnu historiju, no. 41 (2016). 16 See: Danijel Kežić, Bauen Für Den Einheitsstaat: Die Eisenbahn Belgrad-Bar Und Die Desintegration Des Wirtschaftssystems in Jugoslawien (1952–1976), Südosteuropäische Arbeiten 158 (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2017). 17 See: Bronislav Šupica, “Gemeinschaft Der Jugoslawischen Eisenbahnen,” in Schlagadern der Wirtschaft: Eisenbahnen europäischer sozialistischer Länder, 181–204 (Berlin (Ost): Transpress VEB Verlag für Verkehrswesen et.al., 1975). 18 See: Oleg Zinam, “Evaluation of Transport Capacity in Yugoslavia,” in East European Transport Regions and Modes, ed. Bogdan Mieczkowski, 165–92 (The Hague: Springer, Dordrecht, 1980). 19 See: Jozef Wilczynski, “The Passenger Car and Socialist Economic Planning,” in East European Transport Regions and Modes, ed. Bogdan Mieczkowski, 257–82 (The Hague: Springer, Dordrecht, 1980). 9
Additionally, I employ online newspaper articles and the railway forum “Vremeplov” (time machine) by Srećko Ignjatović.20 Those sources do not always abide by scientific standards, yet they constitute a treasure of informal information on railway operations that cannot be found elsewhere. As their neglection would mean to turn a blind eye on important correlations, such sources are, after a thorough process of comparing and double-checking,21 embedded in my thesis. The section on the Bosnian Herzegovinian railway connectivity in the forefront of the Yugoslav Wars is nearly entirely based on the official 1989/1990 guidebook of the Yugoslav railways. In the second part of my research body (Chapter 3) that deals with the railway in modern, Daytonian Bosnia and Herzegovina, different categories of primary sources assume a leading role due to the scarcity of scientific work on the topic. The only accessible transport science article that is specifically devoted to the downturn of the railway systems in South-Eastern Europe since the 1980s was written by T.J. Howkins and constitutes a connection between Chapters 2 and 3.22 A multitude of research is available on political reconstruction and societal fragmentation in post-war BiH, among others by Denisa Kostovicova and Vesna Bojicic- Dzelilovic,23 and the first steps towards economic recovery in the late 1990s have been informatively summarised by Herbert Büschenfeld.24 Hardly any scholarly work, however, can be found on the fate of the BH railway in the new millennium. An important exception is Đuro Marić’s assessment of the transport infrastructure in 2012 with a special emphasis on the European Transport Corridor Vc that runs through the republic.25 Apart from scientific material, five main categories of primary sources are used in Chapter 3. Firstly, a small amount of railway guidebooks that are accessible online only for certain years. Secondly, press releases by the railway companies of the two entities that constitute the most valuable source for changes in connectivity and infrastructure. Thirdly and most abundantly,
20 See: Srećko Ignjatović, “Vremeplov,”, http://vremeplov.ba/ (accessed December 9, 2020). 21 The alleged former existence of certain suspended railway links can be confirmed e.g. when they are visible on online maps that are based on satellite images. 22 See: T. J. Howkins, “Changing Hegemonies and New External Pressures: South East European Railway Networks in Transition,” Journal of Transport Geography 13 (2005), https://f.ls/06chh. 23 See: Denisa Kostovicova and Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic, “Ethnicity Pays: The Political Economy of Postconflict Nationalism in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” in After Civil War: Division, Reconstruction, and Reconciliation in Contemporary Europe, ed. Bill Kissane, 187–212, National and Ethnic Conflict in the 21st Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). 24 See: Herbert Büschenfeld, “Die Wirtschaftliche Lage Der Nachfolgestaaten Jugoslawiens Vor Dem Kosovokrieg,” in Der Jugoslawien-Krieg: Handbuch zu Vorgeschichte, Verlauf und Konsequenzen, ed. Dunja Melčić, 507–22 (Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1999). 25 See: Marić, “Corridor Vc as a factor of integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina into the European Union,”. 10
online media reports of varying quality and critical distance. Beside well-researched articles by media like Aljazeera or Deutsche Welle which also offer background information on the topic, there are also notes and dispatches by numerous BH online news portals that mostly copy-paste from each other and do not mention their sources. However, since a thorough reconstruction of railway connectivity in BiH is not possible without them, the information they provide is cautiously included in my work, if it seems reliable in the context of other sources. Fourthly, official publications by stakeholders of the BH railway system that sometimes lack important information on the process of their creation, e.g.: maps; a variety of statistics published by the statistical institutes of the two entities, partly with scarce or incomplete information on their methodology; a reconstruction plan by the BH Directorate for Economic Planning; transport development and investment plans by the European Union; a comprehensive Framework Transport Strategy for BiH that lacks the indication which authority published it; and official websites where the publishing date of certain information cannot always be determined. The fifth and last category of primary sources pertains to information which I received after personal inquiries. This applies to an e-mail by the state- level Railway Corporative BHŽJK and to a comprehensive table indicating the development of passenger connections that was compiled by the Public Relation Office of the Railways of Republika Srpska. Various requests to other stakeholders, like the Railways of the Federation of BiH, remained unanswered. Additionally, the fifth sort also comprises a semi-structured interview questionaire that was sent to two BH residents who answered it in written form as contemporary witnesses, and to two employees in the transport section of the Banja Luka based NGO “Centre for the Environment”. In the latter case, the questionaire served as basis for a video interview where the two interview partners talked partly as experts, partly from their personal experience. This vast array of different sources that brought about a mixture of methods was compelled by the impossibility to conduct field research due to the travel restrictions posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. In Chapter 4, flaws in traditional transport planning are discussed on the basis of Hermann Knoflacher’s standard work on transport planning.26 Additionally, the chapter refers to a variety of recent surveys, case studies and scholarly analyses on the economy and ecology of
26 See: Hermann Knoflacher, Grundlagen Der Verkehrs- Und Siedlugnsplanung: Verkehrsplanung (Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2007). 11
mobility. The most important sources are a comprehensive work on the internalisation of transport externalities in the EU, issued by the European Commission;27 Milan Marinković’s article about the motorisation trends in former Yugoslav countries;28 a paper by Milica Vilotijević and her colleagues about the prerequisites of a modal shift from road to rail in Serbia; the Master’s thesis by Dženet Ljevo on a synchronised railway timetable in BiH;29 mobility behavioural data by the Austrian Mobility Club VCÖ;30 and publicly accessible documents issued by the Transport Community between the Western Balkan countries and the European Union.31 The array of different sources is completed by a small number of Bosnian Herzegovinian media outlets. The added value of my thesis to transport history and transport planning is the temporal comprehensiveness which allows following the long-term development of railway infrastructure and connectivity in BiH from the 1870s until 2020 and includes the pioneer work of compiling a railway history of the independent, post-socialist republic. So far, the application of holistic transport ecology and economy (considering externalities) to the transport system in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been very limited. The work conducted by official EU bodies (e.g., the TEN-T strategy) and the EU-funded Transport Community is based on the strategy to deepen integration by increasing traffic distances. However, this is done without consideration of the discrepancy between investment policy and climate policy.
27 See: Sustainable Transport Infrastructure Charging and Internalisation of Transport Externalities: Main Findings (Brussels, 2019), https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/e0bf9e5d-a386-11e9-9d01- 01aa75ed71a1/language-en (accessed March 2, 2021). 28 See: Milan Marinković, “Stepen Motorizacije U Srbiji, Republici Srpskoj, Federaciji BIH, Crnoj Gori ISjevernoj Makedoniji,” Put i saobraćaj 65, no. 4 (2019). 29 See: Dženet Ljevo, “Entwurf Eines Taktfahrplans Für Das Eisenbahnnetz in Bosnien Und Herzegovina,” (Master´s thesis, TU Wien, 2012), https://repositum.tuwien.at/bitstream/20.500.12708/9719/2/Entwurf%20eines%20Taktfahrplanes%20fuer%2 0das%20Eisenbahnnetz%20in%20Bosnien%20und%20Herzegowina.pdf (accessed December 29, 2020). 30 See: VCÖ - Verkehrsclub Österreich, “Welche Faktoren Über Den Wechsel Zwischen Auto Und Bahn Entscheiden,”, https://www.vcoe.at/publikationen/blog/detail/welche-faktoren-ueber-den-wechsel-zwischen- auto-und-bahn-entscheiden (accessed March 9, 2021). 31 See: European Commission, “Transport Community,”, https://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes/international/enlargement/western-balkans/transport-community_en (accessed February 5, 2021). 12
1.3 Studying railway links – a theoretical framework
“Our unity as a nation is sustained by free communication of thought and by easy transportation of people and goods. […] Together, the uniting forces of our communication and transportation systems are dynamic elements in the very name we bear — United States. Without them, we would be a mere alliance of many separate parts.”32
This quote, made in 1955 by US-President Dwight D. Eisenhower, refers to his plan to build the American Interstate Highway System and thus might seem a far-fetched choice to open the theory section of a thesis on the Bosnian Herzegovinian railway. Nonetheless, it points at the heart of some developments and thoughts that determine my topic. First and foremost, Eisenhower’s statement most vividly shows the significance of a powerful common transport system for the integration of a territory. In studying former Yugoslavia, matters of difference and cohesion, of unification and particularism are key axes of research, although one should avoid viewing the whole history of the state through the fatalist lens of its eventual dissolution, as Florian Bieber emphasizes.33 The quote is also particularly interesting with regard to post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina, a de-facto confederation of “separate parts” (not even an alliance), bound together by shared history and an imposed peace contract. The second reason for the selection of the initially cited quote is that it marked the starting point of a world-wide change of paradigm regarding transport. With the passing of the US “Federal Aid Highway Act” in 1956 and the subsequent triumph of the automobile,34 the benchmark for mobility was no longer the railway, but the highway, the norm for a means of transport was no longer the train, but the private car. Due to the economic and cultural power of the United States, the four-tyred symbol of freedom and prosperity was proliferated to many parts of the world and also made it via films and comics to titoist Yugoslavia.35 Next to the economic implications of this change, the competition between those genuinely different
32 Dwight D. Eisenhower, Interstate Highway System, 1955 in RealClearPolitics, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/bold_presidential_promises/eisenhower.html (accessed November 26, 2020). 33 See: Florian Bieber, “Introduction,” in Debating the End of Yugoslavia, ed. Florian Bieber, Armina Galijaš and Rory Archer, 1–7 (London/New York: Routledge, 2016), http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/ebookviewer/ebook/bmxlYmtfXzc5NzAyM19fQU41?sid=3a77f37c-4f25- 4582-88dc-2aad1c4bd5bc@sessionmgr4007&vid=0&format=EB&rid=1 (accessed November 27, 2020), 2. 34 See: Karl Schlögel, Im Raume Lesen Wir Die Zeit: Über Zivilisationsgeschichte Und Geopolitik (Munich/Vienna: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2003), 380. 35 See: Radina Vučetić, “Diznizacija Detinjstva I Mladosti U Socijalističkoj Jugoslaviji,” Istorija 20. veka 3: 191. 13
modes of mobility can be explained in cultural terms as well. However, before the ascent of the car as a mass phenomenon and its cultural pressure on railway systems are discussed in more detail, I would like to make some general remarks considering the question, why studying railway connectivity in South-Eastern Europe is relevant and offer an overview of the theoretical approaches at our disposal to do so. The railway as a historical study subject can be approached through a variety of lenses. Probably most manifest is the technical side of the topic: a history of progress and inventions, high-performance power units and architectural feats, metallurgy and sophisticated signalling equipments. Aside from these immediate technical characteristics, the railway can be analysed as an engine for and catalyst of revolutionary economic and political developments: it mirrors a history of industrialisation, standardisation and economic growth, of military strategies and the aforementioned unification of national territories. Closely related to the politological view on increased mobility, yet much more scarcely examined, are the contributions by cultural studies and sociology to railway history and transport history in general. For recent decades, this is particularly interesting with regard to the question which factors determine the individual choice between car and train. In my thesis, I will only touch upon the technical challenges, while the focus will be primarly on political and economic approaches and, to a lesser extent, on sociological questions. While comprehension of the railway’s economic and political importance rose among scholars already simultainously with the route network in the 19th century,36 the main impetus for an anthropologic view on transport systems was given only in the run-up to the spatial turn that has been belatedly proclammated around 1990 in cultural studies.37 Induced by a wide spectre of changing realities and perceptions,38 the turn constituted a transdisciplinary shift of analytic
36 As an early example, see: F. C. Weidmann, Die Budweis-Linz-Gmundner Eisenbahn: In Der Geschichte Ihrer Entstehung Und Vollendung, Und in Ihren Merkantilischen, Strategischen, Technischen Und Topographischen Beziehungen (Vienna: J. P. Sollinger, 1842). 37 See: Jörg Dünne and Stephan Günzel, eds., Raumtheorie: Grundlagentexte Aus Philosophie Und Kulturwissenschaften, 8th ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft, 2015), 14. 38 As reasons for the transdisciplinary turn towards space, Stephan Günzel lists the evolution of the Internet that questioned the traditional perception of space; the rise of peace and environmentalist movements after the NASA published the „blue marble“ pictures of the earth in 1972; the geopolitical turnover that the breakdown of the socialist world brought about; and discussions about gentrification and free art spaces in the urban context. See: Stephan Günzel, Raum: Eine Kulturwissenschaftliche Einführung (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2017), 9–11. 14
paradigm towards space that Jörg Döring and Tristan Thielmann call a “postmodern critique of modernity”.39 Hereafter, definitions of key terms in my thesis are presented alongside some scholarly thoughts that were developed by spatial thinkers – both modern and post-modern – and support my considerations in the last section of Chapter 3 and in Chapter 4. As a basic correlation, Đuro Marić points out that “[t]ransport is one of the most important elements of the functional organization of space.”40 According to the 1983 key writing of the philosopher and dromologist41 Paul Virilio, however, the consequences of this functional organisation compromise the very concept of space. Virilio argues that space is disappearing as a cultural category, as the increase of travel speed would lead to a shift from the geographical distance between two places to the time needed to overcome the distance as the crucial category in transport. In his view, space was losing importance to time.42 Another important philosopher and sociologist whose findings refer to transport was Michel de Certeau. In a writing from 1980, he presumed that “the way of dealing with space indeed creates the determinant conditions for societal life.”43 In my thesis I follow his distinction between place and space. In the definition by de Certeau, place is an order marking the coexistance of things next to each other, a “temporary constellation of fixed points”. This implies that two things cannot be at the same place, be it physically or in another sense. As opposed to place, space is “a netting of moving elements”, resulting from activities. Space always has a time component, it is filled with movement and therefore unsteady and subject to change.44 In this work, spaces are scrutinised with regard to their mutual integration and disintegration. According to Brad Blitz, political integration can either be analysed as „a gradual process of increased interdependence”,45 described by him as consolidation, or as a
39 Jörg Döring and Tristan Thielmann, “Einleitung. Was Lesen Wir Im Raume? Der Spacial Turn Und Das Geheime Wissen Der Geographen,” in Spatial Turn: Das Raumparadigma in den Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften, ed. Jörg Döring and Tristan Thielmann, 7–48 (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2009), 9. 40 Marić, “Corridor Vc as a factor of integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina into the European Union,”: 89. 41 Dromology is a term that Virilio coined himself to describe an interdisciplinary scientific approach dealing with speed as a force in society and politics. See: Günzel, Raum, 26. 42 See: ibid., 28. 43 Michel de Certeau, “Praktiken Im Raum,” in Raumtheorie: Grundlagentexte aus Philosophie und Kulturwissenschaften, ed. Jörg Dünne and Stephan Günzel, 8th ed., 343–53 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft, 2015), 344. 44 Ibid., 345. 45 Brad K. Blitz, “Political Integration and Economic Reconstruction in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Three Paths to Recovery Considered,” Forum Bosnae, no. 11 (2001): 217. 15
synonym for unification.46 I adhere to the first definition, which also covers the economic side of the term. Interesting conclusions on the cultural significance of transport connections can be drawn from a study about the human sense of orientation that de Certeau cites. Based on oral descriptions about the location of places in New York, scholars found two types of depictions among inhabitants: maps and tours. A map description, transferred from New York to Bosnia and Herzegovina, would be: “Banja Luka is located in the North of the country.” A tour description, on the other hand, would be: “If you take the A1 highway from Sarajevo northwards, leave it at Lašva and proceed on the E661 road, you will come to Banja Luka.” In the cited study, 97% of people described the location of places in New York according to the tour type. Hence, it can be deduced that movements are much closer to the human mind than stiff images that constitute an abstraction of our self-experienced reality. When it comes from the urban context to wider geographical areas, however, abstraction in form of maps plays a much bigger role, places become detached from the immediate experience of travellers and turn into abstract points on a grid.47 Other than mere political maps, railway (or road) maps are also depictions of possible tours, societal knowledge about the location of places that may be personally experienced in a trip. Even though the outcome of the study is not directly transferrable from the urban context to the mental map of a country, it adds to the assumption that transport connections strongly influence the perception of people’s living spaces, since (possible) practices are key factors in the human sense of orientation. The development of such transport connections, in this thesis mostly railway routes, can be analysed in different time frames. Drawing on Fernand Braudel’s model of three layers in historical thinking, there is a short-term history of events (courte durée), a medium-term history of thriving (moyenne durée) and a long-term history of continuities and epochal changes (longue durée).48 While the courte durée indeed plays a role in my thesis, as a lot of research is done on completion, discontinuation and reconnection of railway lines – one-day- events with a huge impact – the main category of my work is the moyenne durée, comprehending the time span of several decades or even more than a century. It covers the
46 See: ibid. 47 See: Michel de Certeau, “Praktiken im Raum,” in Raumtheorie, 347. 48 See: Ilja Srubar, “Zyklus Und Wende,” in Kontinuität im Wandel: Betriebe und Gesellschaften Zentraleuropas in der Transformation, ed. Eckhard Dittrich, Friedrich Fürstenberg and Gert Schmidt, 169–80 (Munich/Mering: Rainer Hampp Verlag, 1997), 170. 16
thriving of the railway as the most important transport mode in Bosnia and Herzegovina and its subsequent decline, caused by the rise of the automobile. However, this medium time frame that Braudel also calls “histoire conjoncturelle”49 entails spatial consequences also after the thriving has ceased. When a railway route exists somewhere, its history is not over when the trains using it are suspended. Often, the rails and the embankment do not get dismantled, and even if they are, the economic and building activities that the railway spurred in its vicinity remain visible. If the route will be rehabilitated, there are good chances that the same trail will be used for practical reasons. Lastly, Braudel’s most comprehensive historic category, the longue durée that stretches over centuries or even millennia, cannot be used to approach a railway history alone but is of interest to determine how this transport mode influenced the epochal spatial orientation of BiH. Let us now turn from those more general thoughts to the shaping of cultural landscapes by the railway or, more specific, to railway guidebooks as historical sources. As the German philosopher, sociologist and historian Karl Schlögel states, “railway guidebooks are not only timetables, they are rather chronicles of the overcoming of space, records for the progress made in shortening distances and for the increasing density of space.”50 Moreover, Schlögel highlights the nature of guidebooks as “the outcome of a process of coordination, […] the emanation of collective rationality in organising societal movement.”51 The fascination for this civilisational accomplishment, in his view, is even raised by the experience of its fragility.52 In the context of the great wars of the 20th century, the historian emphasises that railway guidebooks are “documentations of intact relations”,53 but in contrast, their absence in certain years is an indicator for major disruptions in the functioning of a society, or even for its breakdown.54 All of this is certainly valid for a good part of the 19th and 20th century, but are Schlögel’s statements still valid for the later Yugoslav period, the Bosnian War and the era of post- socialism? As we shall see, the railway successively lost its dominant role in favour of road transport in Yugoslavia from the mid-1960s onwards, especially in the passenger sector,55
49 Ibid. 50 Schlögel, Im Raume lesen wir die Zeit, 353. 51 Ibid., 354. 52 See: ibid., 360. 53 Ibid., 361. 54 See: ibid., 353. 55 See: Oleg Zinam, “Evaluation of Transport Capacity in Yugoslavia,” in East European Transport Regions and Modes, 167, 170. 17
where its position is neglectable in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. Phrased polemically: in a country where in a large-scale survey on the most-used transport modes, the answer “train” was chosen by zero percent of participants in recent years,56 what is the relevance of studying railway connections? The development of train infrastructure in Daytonian Bosnia and Herzegovina is the – so far – last episode in a centennial story that cannot be omitted if one wants to get a thourough picture of the railway’s role in the region through time. The integrity and completeness of infrastructural history itself therefore already legitimises my first research focus. Moreover, in the age of car prevalence, the analysis of post-war railway connectivity, of reconstruction, persistace and suspension of certain links still allows to draw conclusions on the state of the abovementioned “process of coordination” between different stakeholders and political spaces, if compared to earlier times. However, more intriguing for the modern period is the subject area that I shall cover with my second research question: the reasons for the downturn of the railway with regard not only to political and economic, but also to sociological aspects. In addittion to the historic significance of the topic, there is also a practical element of my work: the environmental and climate-wise imperative of making transport systems ecologically sustainable, in which the railway plays a crucial role, can only be reasonably tackled in BiH if the factors leading to its decline are clear. In a nutshell, even though Schlögel’s statements about the symbolic power and analytic value of railway guidebooks are compromised since the latter third of the 20th century, the relevance of the topic experiences a revival. As the last part of this introductory section, I return to the initially mentioned cultural divide between rail and road transport that became evident with the ascent of private car ownership as a mass phenomenon and still shows in contemporary infrastructural planning in BiH and most other countries. The railway is a powerful and high capacity means of mass transport. It requires high cost both in construction and maintenance and was, from its rise in the middle of the 19th century up to the 1960s, the key transport infrastructure in economically developed countries per se. Due
56 The Balkan Public Barometer by the EU-funded Regional Cooperation Council is an annually conducted survey in the six Western Balkan countries, initiated in 2015 and offering insights in the public opinion on various topics. The posed question was: “Which mode of transport did you most often use when travelling outside of your place of residence in the past 12 months?” In the last five years (2016-2020), the option train was never chosen by more than 0.5% of participants. See: Regional Cooperation Council, “Balkan Public Barometer: Transport Usage,”, https://www.rcc.int/balkanbarometer/results/2/public (accessed November 19, 2020). 18
to its exorbitant significance for national economies and military strategies, the railway was state-owned for most of the 20th century in most European states.57 Therefore, it constitutes a means of public transport in two senses of the word: it is both publicly accessible (though not for free) and publicly owned. Due to the monetary restriction posed by ticket fees, trains are, sociologically speaking, a limited public space. They are rail-bound and function according to a strict scheme of time and space. They cannot deviate from their predetermined route and should not deviate from their timetable. Because of this strict corset, the functioning of the railway is subject to easy disturbance. Cars, on the other hand, constitute a private and individual means of transport. They symbolise freedom and personal control by the driver, their spatial and temporal location is not restricted by rails or timetables. Theoretically, they can leave their designated, tarmacked habitation and are not confined to state-owned road infrastructure. Hence, they represent an exploratory spirit and may be perceived as tools for the civilisation’s dominance of nature. Both the car and the train are therefore genuinely modern institutions; however, they emphasise different aspects of modernity. The human geographer John Brinckerhoff Jackson appoints two main functions to roads that also apply to railway lines: on the one hand, roads are engines of growth and expansion themselves; on the other, they are magnets for new developments occurring around them, which is another reason for studying the location of transport routes and links. His assessment that the mobility and elasticity of roads is unique in the context of modern landscapes, however, supports the idea of individual transport.58 Schlögel comments on American freeways: “Only the highway makes the country available. Every spot of its territory is reachable without great difficulties and accessible at all times.”59 Moreover, “only the network of highways turns the area into a territory.”60 This is the powerful promise of a dense high- speed transport system that has never existed in Bosnia and Herzegovina and that the railway
57 “The rise of state ownership was one of the most significant policy changes in the railway sector in the early 20th century.” Dan Bogart, “A Global Perspective on Railway Inefficiency and the Rise of State Ownership, 1880– 1912,” Explorations in Economic History 47 (2010): 158 Privatisation in the sector only became accepted in the wake of the global turn towards neoliberalism in the last decade of the 20th century. See: Angelo Salento and Guiseppe Pesante, “Liberalisation and Value Extraction: The Trajectory of Railways in the Neo-Liberal State,” Partecipazione e Conflitto 9, no. 2 (2016): 468. 58 See:John Brinckerhoff Jackson, “Roads Belong in the Landscape (Abridged),” in Landscape in Sight. Looking at America., ed. Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, 249–54 (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1997), 251; Cited afterSchlögel, Im Raume lesen wir die Zeit, 384. 59 Schlögel, Im Raume lesen wir die Zeit, 383. 60 Ibid., 379. 19
could fulfil only to a certain extent, due to its abovementioned spatial and time-bound limitations. From a scientific perspective, the corset of timetables and a limited number of possible routes make the railway an easier historical study object than road transport. Railway connectivity can be determined by two simple, attestable and comparable factors: the travel time between two places on the one hand and the frequency of connections on the other. However, the aforementioned corset also indicates the practical advantages of the railway that gain ever more importance in the wake of rising awareness of natural ecological boundaries and the problems entailed by car-centred transport planning. Before I can illuminate these advantages, it is necessary to provide some fundamental arguments about the nature of traffic. The promise of individual freedom that the car offers is compromised by traffic congestion and insufficient parking options especially around urban areas. Those obstructions are not symptoms of too little investment in car infrastructure, rather evidence for the basic interrelation that investment in transport infrastructure always reallocates existing traffic to this infrastructure. Hermann Knoflacher proves that mobility does never rise in a system, it only shifts from one transport mode to another by changes in the relative convenience of the respective modes – e.g. from walking to riding a car. With the increase of possible travel speed through new motorways or high-speed railway lines, longer distances are covered to fulfil personal needs like working or shopping, while the time spent for mobility stays the same. Therefore, no time savings can be ever achieved in a transport system as a whole.61 Knoflacher criticises that the expenses needed to maintain these systems and the external costs that they produce (e.g. for health, environment and climate) are often ignored in arguments on efficiency increases by new infrastructure.
“On the economic level, the belief that a system in which more energy is spent for mobility than attained as a result of that mobility can be sustained, led to fictitious economic systems – even if they still seem to be very successful at the moment.”62
With these basic principles in mind, we can return to the comparative advantages of rail over road transport that become evident as soon as negative externalities – costs that are not paid
61 See: Knoflacher, Grundlagen der Verkehrs- und Siedlugnsplanung: Verkehrsplanung, 216–18. 62 Ibid., 42. Translated from German by Florian Supe. 20
by their producers but by the society as a whole – are considered. As transport related externalities, Emrah Demir and his colleagues list “emissions, noise, congestion, accidents, water pollution and land use [as well as] energy production, vehicle production, maintenance and disposal, infrastructure construction”.63 The traffic shifts towards longer routes and more distant destinations – commonly referred to as an increase in mobility – that are perceived as necessary to integrate territories and foster economic growth64 can be pursued more efficiently by the railway system if external costs are incorporated in the calculation, as various studies suggest.65 Additionally to the aforementioned externalities, the railway also uses space much more efficiently than road infrastructure,66 which is not only a major planning aspect in evading traffic congestion and related personal inconveniences, but also a significant argument in the fight against extensive land consumption and soil sealing.67 To sum up the findings of this section, studying the development of railway links in Bosnia and Herzegovina offers valuable insights in the (dis)integration of spaces, as they do not only create economic and political interdependencies, work as engines of growth and expansion and attract new developments, but also shape human orientation and the perception of
63 Emrah Demir et al., “A Selected Review on the Negative Externalities of the Freight Transportation: Modeling and Pricing,” Transportation Research Part E 77 (2015): 110. 64 The shift of mobility to farther places as a common development goal cannot be criticised within the scope of this thesis. For critique on the paradigm of perpetual freight transport growth, see: Murray Goulden et al., “Beyond ‘Predict and Provide’: UK Transport, the Growth Paradigm and Climate Change,” Transport Policy 32, 139–147 (2014). 65 In the EU28 in 2016, external costs in €-cent/pkm were significantly lower for all types of rail passenger transport than for passenger cars. The external costs for electrified trains were lower than for busses, while busses produced fewer external costs than diesel trains. In freight transport, both electric and diesel trains produced less external costs than lorries. See: Sustainable Transport Infrastructure Charging and Internalisation of Transport Externalities: Main Findings, 12. An article on inland freight transport in Belgium concludes that “road transport has the maximum impact for every environmental impact indicator, with rail freight transport presenting the minimum one”. Angel L. Merchana et al., “Life Cycle Externalities Versus External Costs: The Case of Inland Freight Transport in Belgium,” Transportation Research Part D 67 (2019): 576. 66 See: Marion Drut, “Spatial Issues Revisited: The Role of Shared Transportation Modes,” Transport Policy 66 (2018): 85, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X17304390?via%3Dihub. 67 The rapidly rising space allocated to mobility is a main contributor to land consumption and soil sealing in most developed and developing countries. This, in turn, causes problems like a lower resilience to extreme weather conditions, a loss of biodiversity and the fragmentation of ecosystems. See: ibid. While no figures can be found on land consumption in BiH, 2.5% of Austria’s total area was sealed by transport infrastructure in 2019, which equals five times the area of the capital Vienna. See: VCÖ - Verkehrsclub Österreich, “VCÖ Zu Weltbodentag: Verkehr Beansprucht in Österreich Bereits 5-Fache Fläche Wiens!,”, https://www.vcoe.at/presse/presseaussendungen/detail/vcoe-verkehr-in-oesterreich-verbraucht-bereits-5- fache-flaeche-wiens (accessed March 1, 2021). 21
space. In terms of transport connectivity, however, the key category of space is challenged by time as the decisive dimension. Railway guidebooks are documentations of intact relations and allow to draw conclusions on processes of coordination also today, when road transport took over the former key role of rails in the region. The decline of the railway system in BiH can be only understood in relation to the rise of the passenger car, which could prosper due to the neglect of its external costs. In light of increasing awareness for the growing externalities of road traffic, the railway regains importance in all regions of the world and should also attract more political and scholarly interest in South-Eastern Europe.
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2. Shifting connectivity – Railway links as indicator of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s political and economic ties up until 1992
In this chapter, I shall follow the development of the railway network in today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) from its beginning in the late Ottoman Empire up to the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia. I shall examine the history of routes as a history of successive physical links between different parts of BiH and the bordering regions of today’s Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro. The linkage of towns and regions is analysed as linkage of dynamic spaces which integrate to bigger spaces through the railway. While political and economic considerations in railway planning, including the decisions for the sequence of constructed routes, are explained, I also briefly illuminate the circumstances under which the construction took place and, with regard to the late socialist period, the administrative organisation of the railway system. In the last section, an overview of the passenger train frequency along the most important routes within and leading out of Bosnia and Herzegovina is provided. The whole chapter focuses on building activities in peace time, whereas the history of usage and destruction of the railway system in the World Wars is mostly omitted.
2.1. Ottoman rule
Up until the middle ages, Bosnian traffic routes were directed primarly towards the Adriatic coast. The millennia-old character of the region as a Dalmatian hinterland may be described as an archetypical example for a longue durée68 structure that influenced its development considerably. After the incorporation of Bosnia into the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century, however, a reorientation to the east occurred, and paths were aligned with the main road Belgrade–Istanbul. At the same time, connections with the seaside in Bosnia’s West remained important.69 350 years later, the Sublime Porte had lost much of its previous power and appeal. By the 19th century, the Empire was struggling to find its way in a rapidly modernising world in which the course of political and economic development became increasingly dictated by Western
68 Fernand Braudel cites “geographic coerciveness” as the most intelligible example for long-time structures that determine history. See: Fernand Braudel, “Geschichte Und Sozialwissenschaften: Die Longue Durée,” in Schrift und Materie der Geschichte: Vorschläge zur systematischen Aneignung historischer Prozesse, ed. Marc Bloch, Fernand Braudel and Lucien Febvre, 47–85 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977), 56. 69 See: Hrelja, “Industrija i saobraćaj u Bosni i Hercegovini 1929.–1941. godine,”: 154. 23
Europe. Important questions regarding the administration and the relation between the Sultan and his subjects were addressed in the Tanzimat reforms from the late 1830s onwards, yet this “half-hearted top-down project of modernisation”70 took too long to halt the Empire’s decline and evoked resistance from traditionally privileged social groups. The Ottoman province (Eyalet) of Bosnia71 played an ambiguous role in this setting. On the one hand, it constituted a peripheral and remote area in the eyes of the Sultan, where his orders were often neglected or even openly opposed by the local authorities.72 At the same time, with the territorial losses of the “Great Turkish War” at the end of the 17th century and, decades later, with the successive awakening of Christian nationalism in the Balkans, Bosnia became the front line to the Porte’s traditional arch-enemy Austria and the unruly bulwark of Ottoman power in Europe.73 Only in the 1860s did Sultan Abdülaziz become convinced that a railway connection between the Ottoman heartlands at the Bosporus and distant Bosnia was of high strategic importance to ensure stability in a province so reluctant to his attempts at reform.74 In this matter his plans coincided with the Austro-Hungarian aim to build a railway line to the Ottoman capital as a means of strengthening Vienna’s and Budapest’s position in oriental trade.75 After several shifts of opinion on the side of Austria, Hungary and the Porte, the prospective mainline was for political and strategic reasons76 not projected through the topographically relatively
70 Harald Heppner, “Modernisierung Der Politik Als Strukturproblem in Südosteuropa,” Österreichische Osthefte 37, no. 3 (1995): 721. 71 The Bosnian Eyalet underwent several administrative reorganisations in the course of the 19th century. At times, Herzegovina held the status of a distinct province; in the 1860s the Eyalets were restructured in Vilayets. However, to avoid an unncessary dwelling on these changes, I shall refer to the land merely as „Bosnia“ for the Ottoman period. See: Omer Ibrahimagić, Državno-Pravni Razvitak Bosne I Hercegovine (Sarajevo: Štampa GIK "OKO" 1998), 18. 72 See: Enes Pelidija, “A Short Review on Bosnian Self-Conscience During the Ottoman Period,” Znakovi vremena - Casopis za filozofiju, religiju, znanost i društvenu praksu 60 (2013), 245-246. 73 See: Noel R. Malcolm, John R. Lampe and Paula Pickering, “Bosnia and Herzegovina: Ottoman Bosnia,” in Encyclopaedia Britannica (2020), https://www.britannica.com/place/Bosnia-and-Herzegovina/Ottoman-Bosnia (accessed August 11, 2020). 74 See: Peter Jordan, “Die Entwicklung des Eisenbahnnetzes auf dem Gebiet des heutigen Jugoslawien (bis 1918),” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, 21; Zečević, “Izgradnja željezničkog saobraćaja u Socijalističkoj Republici Bosni i Hercegovini,”: 44. 75 See: Peter Jordan, “Die Entwicklung des Eisenbahnnetzes auf dem Gebiet des heutigen Jugoslawien (bis 1918),” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, 21. 76 At the Congress of Berlin, Serbia’s demand for independence from Constantinople was satisfied on condition that the Principality had to connect central Europe to the Aegean with a railway line through its territory. From the Austrian perspective, this obligation constituted an endangerment for the Austro-Hungarian monopoly on trade with Serbia, which, until then, could only export northwards. Consequently, it was in the interest of Vienna that the Balkan mainline bypassed Serbia (and Hungary) and ran through Bosnia instead. Belgrade and Budapest alike tried to prevent the construction of this route, initially without success. See: Singer, Unsere Eisenbahn- 24
convenient Principality of Serbia, which would have thus been the economically logic choice, but through the much more mountainous territory of Ottoman Bosnia.77 The concession to connect Constantinople via Plovdiv, Niš, Sarajevo and Banja Luka with the border with Habsburg (Hungarian) Croatia was made in 1869 to the Austro-German financier Maurice de Hirsch, who would complete the first small part of the route through North- Western Bosnia in 1872.78 This section, from Banja Luka to the border village of Dobrljin,79 covered 104 km80 and remained the only railway line in operation in Ottoman Bosnia. As the planned connection to Zagreb, which would have provided access to the Habsburg railway system, was not realised until 188281 due to Hungarian resistance,82 the route was of limited use.83 In the South-East, the projected connection from the Ottoman railway system to Bosnia was never realised further northbound than Mitrovica in today’s Kosovo,84 as Sultan Abdülaziz’s successor Abdülhamid II was critical towards a railway connection with Central Europe,85 probably mostly because of the Porte’s difficulties in bearing the huge cost.86
Anschlüsse nach Südosten und Süden, 12; See: Martin Smoliner, “Politische Aspekte Des Eisenbahnbaus in Südosteuropa Vor 1914,” (Master´s thesis, University of Graz, 2015), 44. 77 See: Richard Riedl, “Sandschakbahn Und Transversallinie: Ein Beitrag Zur Geschichte Der Verkehrspolitischen Interessensgegensätze Auf Der Balkanhalbinsel,” (Vienna, March 13, 1908), 3–4. Quoted from Smoliner, Politische Aspekte des Eisenbahnbaus in Südosteuropa vor 1914, 45. 78 See: Peter Jordan, “Die Entwicklung des Eisenbahnnetzes auf dem Gebiet des heutigen Jugoslawien (bis 1918),” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, 21. 79 Except for Belgrade with its common English appellation, I shall use the Slavic name for toponyms in BiH, Croatia and Serbia, even though towns and cities often feature in the languages of the dominant power of the time in historical sources. 80 See: Kurt Wessely, “Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung von Bosnien-Herzegowina,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, 548. 81 See: Eisenbahnbureau des K. und K. Generalstabes, “Unsere Eisenbahnen Im Krieg Nebst Zweck, Gründung Und Wirksamkeit Des K. Und K. Eisenbahn- Und Telegraphenregimentes,” in Geschichte der Eisenbahnen der Österr.-Ungar. Monarchie, ed. Hermann Strach, 4 vols., 111–74 2 (Vienna, Ciescyn, Leipzig: Karl Prochaska K.u.K Hofbuchhandlung & K.u.K. Hofdruckerei, 1898), 153 and Hermann Strach, “Geschichte Der Eisenbahnen Österreich-Ungarns Von Den Ersten Anfängen Bis 1867,” in Geschichte der Eisenbahnen der Österr. Ungar. Monarchie, ed. Hermann Strach, 73–503 1.1 (Vienna, Ciescyn, Leipzig: Karl Prochaska K.u.K Hofbuchhandlung & K.u.K. Hofdruckerei, 1898), 411. 82 Hungary feared to be side-lined with a direct connection from the Austrian crownlands southwards to Bosnia. See: Singer, Unsere Eisenbahn-Anschlüsse nach Südosten und Süden, 15. 83 See: Peter Jordan, “Die Entwicklung des Eisenbahnnetzes auf dem Gebiet des heutigen Jugoslawien (bis 1918),” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, 22. 84 See: ibid., 19. 85 See: Horn, Die Bahnen in Bosnien und der Herzegowina, 6. Cited after Helga Berdan, “Die Machtpolitik Österreich-Ungarns Und Der Eisenbahnbau in Bosnien-Herzegowina 1872–1914,” (Dissertation, Universität Wien, 2008), 39. Berdan does not mention Abdülhamid’s name, but since the direct successor of Abdülaziz was ousted after three months of reign in 1876 and replaced by Abdülhamid, the critical stance of “Abdülaziz’ successor” probably relates to him. 86 While Smoliner only cites the worsening financial constraints of the Porte as the reason for the abortion of the project, Berdan also suggests a political disaffirmation of the project. Both refer to Horn for their assertions. See: 25
Hence, the economic unprofitability of the existing “Oriental Railway” fragment and, in addition, an insurrection in Bosnia,87 led to the suspension of traffic between Dobrljin and Banja Luka in 1875, only three years after the route’s completion.88 Subsequently, a major turnover in the infrastructural orientation of Bosnia took place when the local turmoil mushroomed into the Great Eastern crisis, which, in turn, resulted in the transfer of the region’s administration from the weakened Ottoman Empire to Austria-Hungary at the Congress of Berlin.89 It is, however, noteworthy that the reorientation to the North came by no means all of a sudden. Despite the lack of efficient transport paths, “Bosnia-Herzegovina had developed into a Habsburg economic hinterland”90 by 1862, when a commercial agreement was signed between Vienna, Budapest and the Porte that considerably decreased custom tariffs on Bosnian exports to the Danube Monarchy.91
2.2. Austro-Hungarian rule
As of Bosnia’s occupation by the Habsburg Monarchy in 1878, the traffic communications of the de jure Ottoman province were entirely reoriented to the Sava line to its North.92 It was, after the end of the independent medieval Kingdom of Bosnia, the second major redirection of the region’s traffic streams towards the heart of an Empire. While the formerly pivotal roads to the East lost importance, the connections with the coast remained a crucial economic concern for the new rulers, as we shall see. Following the short and – in its constructional achievement – meagre prehistory in Ottoman times, intense railway building activity started after the Austro-Hungarian occupation. The probably most important factor in the infrastructural development of BiH was its common
Horn, Die Bahnen in Bosnien und der Herzegowina, 6–7. Cited after Berdan, Die Machtpolitik Österreich-Ungarns und der Eisenbahnbau in Bosnien-Herzegowina 1872–1914, 40; Smoliner, Politische Aspekte des Eisenbahnbaus in Südosteuropa vor 1914, 54. 87 In the early 1870s, an uprising of (Christian) farmers in Herzegovina against the harsh taxes imposed on them by (Muslim) local land-owners led to turmoil that spread to the whole of Bosnia by 1875. In the eyes of Western Europe, the Porte was unable to enforce its promise for a more egalitarian treatment of its non-Muslim subjects. See: Davide Rodogno, Against Massacre: Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire, 1815-1914 (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012), 144, 164. 88 See: Zečević, “Izgradnja željezničkog saobraćaja u Socijalističkoj Republici Bosni i Hercegovini,”: 44. 89 See: Rodogno, Against Massacre, 166. 90 Raymond Detrez, “Reluctance and Determination: The Prelude to the Austro-Hungarian Occupation of Bosnia- Herzegovina in 1878,”, https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/6941418/file/6941465 (accessed December 21, 2020), 5. 91 See: ibid. 92 See: Hrelja, “Industrija i saobraćaj u Bosni i Hercegovini 1929.–1941. godine,”: 154. 26
administration by Vienna and Budapest.93 Although bound together by a monarch and a shared foreign policy, the Austrian and the Hungarian part of the Empire maintained largely diverging interests that became especially apparent in the planning of railway routes in the south of its territory.94 In a nutshell, both sides feared that a better railway connection of the internal competitor would result in economic disadvantages for the own half of the Empire. According to Omer Ibrahimagić, BiH was mainly desired by Austria-Hungary for strategic geopolitical reasons, since its tenure secured the hinterland of the formerly exposed Dalmatian and Istrian coast,95 curtailed Russian influence in the Balkans and impeded the formation of a South Slavic national state dominated by Serbia.96 In financial terms, on the other hand, “the acquisition was considered not only no gain but a definite loss”.97 To militarily conduct the occupation, Habsburg troops revived the railway route Dobrljin– Banja Luka, which started to operate again in 1879.98 Since military officials stated that holding captured Sarajevo against armed Bosnian resistance would be only possible with a strong supply line,99 a second southbound railway route was hastily built from scratch within 10 months from Brod at the Croatian border through the Bosna valley to Zenica in central Bosnia. It went into operation in 1879 as well and went as far as Sarajevo until 1882.100 This project did not go undisputed among the occupants. The urgent military need to reach the Bosnian capital by rail could have been pursued by extending the Dobrljin–Banja Luka line
93 See: Ibrahimagić, Državno-pravni razvitak Bosne i Hercegovine, 24. 94 See: Peter Jordan, “Die Entwicklung des Eisenbahnnetzes auf dem Gebiet des heutigen Jugoslawien (bis 1918),” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, 18 andSee: Dževad Juzbašić, “Der Eisenbahnbau in Bosnien-Herzegowina und die wirtschaftlichen Gegensätze zwischen Österreich und Ungarn,” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, 143–44. 95 See: Ibrahimagić, Državno-pravni razvitak Bosne i Hercegovine, 23. 96 See: Mustafa Imamović, “Bosnien-Herzegowina Bis 1918,” in Der Jugoslawien-Krieg: Handbuch zu Vorgeschichte, Verlauf und Konsequenzen, ed. Dunja Melčić, 64–87 (Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1999), 80. 97 Robert Kann, “Trends Towards Colonialism in the Habsburg Empire, 1878–1918: The Case of Bosnia- Herzegovina, 1878–1914,” in Russian and Slavonic History, ed. Don K. Rowney and G. E. Orchard, 164–80 (Columbus: Slavica Publishers, 1977), 68. CCited after Clemens Ruthner, “Habsburg´s Only Colony? Bosnia- Herzegovina and Austria Hungary, 1878-1918,” SEEU Review 13, no. 1 (2019): 4, https://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/seeur/13/1/article-p2.xml?product=sciendo (accessed December 21, 2020). Ruthner probably made a typing error in his citation, as page 68 is not within the scope of Kann’s contribution as cited by Ruthner. 98 See: Kurt Wessely, “Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung von Bosnien-Herzegowina,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, 548. 99 See: Dževad Juzbašić, “Der Eisenbahnbau in Bosnien-Herzegowina und die wirtschaftlichen Gegensätze zwischen Österreich und Ungarn,” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, 145. 100 See: Zečević, “Izgradnja željezničkog saobraćaja u Socijalističkoj Republici Bosni i Hercegovini,”: 45. 27
through its originally planned corridor via Travnik.101 Due to the challenging topography and the constructional requirements of the normal-gauge system, the building process of this alternative would have been slower and more expensive; above all, however, it would have connected the heart of Bosnia directly with the Austrian Südbahn in the medium run and thus bypassed the Hungarian heartland.102 For Budapest, not only the access to the occupied province was at stake, they also feared perpetuated side-lining in oriental trade – if the route was continued southwards to become the prospective mainline to the Bosphorus Straits. To put that Viennese plan into practice, though, something else was needed: the existing Bosnian normal-gauge line was not yet connected to Zagreb and the Südbahn as Hungary did not permit the building of the section between Dobrljin and the Croatian town Sisak on Croatian (Hungarian) territory.103 For the time being, Budapest won the argument, Sarajevo was linked to the Monarchy via Brod with a narrow-gauge track of 760 mm. Already in the time before the occupation, Hungary held the opinion that if the prospective Oriental mainline railway had to be built through Bosnia instead of Serbia, the route should at least run through the Eastern part of the occupied province and thus be accessible from Hungary.104 In the year occupation began, the Hungarian state railway company expanded its network through the Great Hungarian Plain westwards to Brod, so that the first link between the heart of Bosnia (Zenica and later Sarajevo) and another railway system was established in 1879.105 The capital Budapest, however, was at that time only accessible from the South-West by making a significant detour to the West or East.106 Subsequently, Bernhard Singer, a member of the Lower Austrian Chamber of Trade, assumed in 1879 that Budapest’s insistence on the Brod-Sarajevo line could be only explained by their
101 See: Smoliner, Politische Aspekte des Eisenbahnbaus in Südosteuropa vor 1914, 50. 102 See: Dževad Juzbašić, “Der Eisenbahnbau in Bosnien-Herzegowina und die wirtschaftlichen Gegensätze zwischen Österreich und Ungarn,” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, 143. 103 See: Peter Jordan, “Die Entwicklung des Eisenbahnnetzes auf dem Gebiet des heutigen Jugoslawien (bis 1918),” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, 22 and Hermann Strach, “Geschichte der Eisenbahnen Österreich-Ungarns von den ersten Anfängen bis 1867,” in Geschichte der Eisenbahnen der Österr. Ungar. Monarchie, 411. 104 See: Smoliner, Politische Aspekte des Eisenbahnbaus in Südosteuropa vor 1914, 50. 105 See: Peter Jordan, “Die Entwicklung des Eisenbahnnetzes auf dem Gebiet des heutigen Jugoslawien (bis 1918),” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, 23. 106 See: Development of Hungarian Railways Until WW1 (Hungarian State Railways, 1915), https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Development_of_Hungarian_railways_until_ww1.png (accessed December 17, 2020). 28
intent to supply the South-Western Hungarian counties with Bosnian crude materials and, vice versa, access a new market for overproduction in these counties. Singer criticizes this agenda as myopic, as, in comparison to a connection to Vienna and Budapest (via Dobrljin), the new link would not have a positive impact on the Bosnian economy. In the South of Hungary, Bosnian goods would have to compete with similar products from other Balkan lands, that could be transported on the Danube at cheaper costs.107 The Austrian trade lobbyist’s fiercely presented arguments – certainly refutable by counter arguments from the Hungarian side – show that railway planning in the occupied province was a highly political matter from the very beginning. The direct link from the Hungarian capital to the South-West of its territory was put into operation in 1882, obliterating the pivotal point of Singer’s critique.108 In the same year, the section from Dobrljin to Sisak in central Croatia was finally completed, after Hungary had given up its resistance against it.109 From that time on, Banja Luka was the first important Bosnian town with a connection to Zagreb. Seven years later, in 1889, Hungary completed the extension of its Croatian westbound railway route from Brod further to Sunja, which established the connection Sarajevo–Brod–Zagreb.110 From now on, both Sarajevo and Banja Luka were linked to Zagreb, Vienna, Budapest and to the central European railway network. A map of the Hungarian railway system in 1890 also shows a route leading from Brod via Sremska Mitrovica to Belgrade.111 The massive simplification of transport thanks to these lines tied Bosnia closer to the Dual Monarchy during the first decade of the occupation. Other measures taken in the 1880s such as the (illegal) extension of the Austro-Hungarian customs union to the province – which was de jure still under Ottoman sovereignty – expedited the economic and political integration in the Habsburg territory.112
107 See: Singer, Unsere Eisenbahn-Anschlüsse nach Südosten und Süden, 15–16. 108 See: Josef Gonda, “Das Eisenbahnwesen in Ungarn Seit 1867,” in Geschichte der Eisenbahnen der Österr.- Ungar. Monarchie, ed. Hermann Strach, 4 vols., 353–418 3 (Vienna, Ciescyn, Leipzig: Karl Prochaska K.u.K Hofbuchhandlung & K.u.K. Hofdruckerei, 1898), 403. 109 See: Eisenbahnbureau des K. und K. Generalstabes, “Unsere Eisenbahnen im Krieg nebst Zweck, Gründung und Wirksamkeit des k. und k. Eisenbahn- und Telegraphenregimentes,” in Geschichte der Eisenbahnen der Österr.-Ungar. Monarchie, 153. 110 Josef Gonda, “Das Eisenbahnwesen in Ungarn seit 1867,” in Geschichte der Eisenbahnen der Österr.-Ungar. Monarchie, 408. 111 See: László Balla, Az Osztrák-Magyar-Monarchia. Varsuti Térképe 1890 (2009), http://ballal.gofree.hu/G/Fali/Osztrak_Magyar_Monarchia_1890_v5.jpg (accessed December 17, 2020). 112 See: Ryo Murakami, “Die Annexion Von Bosnien-Herzegowina Und István Burián,” Prague Papers on the History of International Relations 10, no. 1 (2017): 71, 29
At the same time, the economic integration of the Bosnian space itself advanced slowly. Indeed, the Austro-Hungarian economic policy towards Bosnia and Herzegovina was based on the exploitation of its natural resources, which required a high-capacity transport system.113 However, since the railway served as an imperialist instrument, as Bronislav Šupica points out, the evacuation of crude materials northwards was the main purpose of the BH tracks, whilst better connectivity within the occupied territory was side-lined.114 Ironically, Singer’s contemporary writing makes clear that efficient exploitation of BH resources was not a reason for the acquisition of the province. Instead, the economic need for maximum yield was only prompted by the expensive occupation and administration of BiH itself, which should not affect the Empire’s tense budget.115 The dogma of minimum investment became, as explained in more detail later, alongside political fears the biggest inhibiting factor in the Bosnian Herzegovinian railway construction of the time. The fact that the two branch lines from the imperial heartland to the South – Dobrljin–Banja Luka and Brod–Sarajevo – were not connected with each other, resembling slanted colonial transport routes116 such as the ones that were built from the European trading bases on the African seaside to the interior of the continent,117 may be viewed as a typical feature of the Dual Monarchy’s imperialist agenda in its BH transport policy. Although the common Austro- Hungarian Minister for Finance and Bosnian Herzegovinian governor Benjámin Kállay realised the importance of the province’s integration into a single transport space for its economic self- preservation, the building of a direct link between Banja Luka and Sarajevo via Travnik representing the key part of this endeavour was prevented by Hungary, fearing that Bosnian resources would drain into Dobrljin instead of towards Brod. Likewise, Budapest impeded a
http://yadda.icm.edu.pl/yadda/element/bwmeta1.element.desklight-a2d5e9f9-d1df-4e3a-b6c9-44a601c387be (accessed December 17, 2020). 113 See: Dževad Juzbašić, “Der Eisenbahnbau in Bosnien-Herzegowina und die wirtschaftlichen Gegensätze zwischen Österreich und Ungarn,” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, 149. 114 See: Bronislav Šupica, “Gemeinschaft der Jugoslawischen Eisenbahnen,” in Schlagadern der Wirtschaft, 184. 115 See: Singer, Unsere Eisenbahn-Anschlüsse nach Südosten und Süden, 14. 116 Arguments for considering Bosnia and Herzegovina a Habsburg quasi-colony are made e.g. by Clemens Ruthner. See: Ruthner, “Habsburg´s only Colony?,” 117 See: Richard Bullock, Off Track: Sub-Saharan African Railways, Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic 17 (2009), https://ppp.worldbank.org/public-private- partnership/sites/ppp.worldbank.org/files/documents/Africa_Offtrac%20- %20SubSaharan%20African%20Railways_EN.pdf (accessed December 18, 2020), 7vii 30
railway route from Split to Sarajevo, which would have rendered the Hungarian port Rijeka less important.118 However, except for the cross-border connections towards the Habsburg Empire, many BH inland lines were also built. With regards to them, Vienna and Budapest’s strategy can be described as a pervasion of Bosnia and Herzegovina rather than its integration to a single space. The two most important lines that Zečević names are a branch which departed from the Sarajevo–Brod line at Doboj and led eastwards to Tuzla and Simin Han, completed in 1886, and the route Sarajevo–Metković, which connected the Bosnian railway system to Herzegovina and linked the BH capital to Dalmatia, completed in 1891.119 The Simin Han line became a significant incentive for the development of the North-Eastern Bosnian lumber industry and stimulated the rise of the Tuzla region as an industrial hub for various economic branches.120 With the connection to the Dalmatian harbour of Metković, on the other hand, Bosnia got railway access to the Adriatic Sea. The town, however, was not directly located at the coast, but roughly 20 kilometres up the Neretva river, which allowed only smaller ships to dock and hampered Metković’s importance in trade.121 It is worth pointing out that the millennia-old economic linkage between BiH and the coast was strengthened by construction of a train track only after the construction of two main lines to the North and a side line to an industrial region had been completed, in other words when the new orientation towards the Habsburg Empire’s hubs and a branch to the more topical economic space around Tuzla had been consolidated. There were also routes built which Zečević does not mention. From 1895 on, the central Bosnian towns Jajce and Bugojno were connected to the axis Brod-Sarajevo by a two-ended side branch diverging from the main line at Lašva. Due to the steep incline, certain sections had to be constructed with features of a funicular, a solution that had already enabled the link between Mostar and Sarajevo.122 The importance of the former railhead station Jajce increased when the so-called “Steinbeisbahn” was constructed by a private investor. It mainly served as a forest line
118 See: Horn, Die Bahnen in Bosnien und der Herzegowina, 152; Cited after Berdan, Die Machtpolitik Österreich- Ungarns und der Eisenbahnbau in Bosnien-Herzegowina 1872–1914, 63. 119 See: Zečević, “Izgradnja željezničkog saobraćaja u Socijalističkoj Republici Bosni i Hercegovini,”: 45. 120 See: Hauptmann, Die Österreichisch-Ungarische Herrschaft in Bosnien und der Hercegovina 1878–1918, 75. 121 See: Kurt Wessely, “Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung von Bosnien-Herzegowina,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, 549–50. 122 See: Hauptmann, Die Österreichisch-Ungarische Herrschaft in Bosnien und der Hercegovina 1878–1918, 74– 75. 31
between Northern Bosnian Prijedor (where it was linked to the Dobrljin–Banja Luka route) and Dalmatian Knin (completed in 1914), but with its side branch from the mountain range Srnetica eastwards to Jajce, finalised only in wartime (1916), it also established the first inner- Bosnian railway connection between the two biggest cities of BiH, Sarajevo and Banja Luka. This connection was, however, very long and cumbersome and did thus – in line with the Hungarian agenda – little to advance the integration of the Bosnian space.123 In 1894, the Sava was bridged close to the Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian border triangle, linking the Bosnian border town of Brčko via Vinkovci to the Croatian railway system. Even though no extension was built further southwards, the new railway bridge meant that connectivity of North-Eastern BiH increased.124 In 1901, the Herzegovinian line was extended southwards to Dubrovnik and, – for strategic reasons, further to the Bay of Kotor in today’s Montenegro, which had an important war harbour belonging to the Habsburg marine. Most of this route was constructed on the Herzegovinian side of the BiH-Dalmatian border.125 A few years later, in 1905 (Hauptmann) or 1906 (Jordan), the so-called Eastern line from Sarajevo via Višegrad to the Serbian border at Donje Vardište was completed.126 Wessely points out the primacy of military considerations in this project, similar to the beginning of the occupation. In the meantime, the extension of the BH railway system had been predominantly actuated by economic needs.127 After more than two decades with a strict North-South orientation in transport planning, it was the first route that sought connectivity with the East of Bosnia, the main transport orientation in former Ottoman times. However, the most vivid period of railway building in Austro-Hungarian BiH were the two decades from 1882–1903, when the aforementioned ambitious Bosnian Herzegovinian
123 See: Elmar Oberegger, “Steinbeis-Bahn,” in Zur Eisenbahngeschichte des Alpen-donau-Adria-Raumes, ed. Elmar Oberegger (2006–2008), http://www.oberegger2.org/enzyklopaedie/steinbeis.htm (accessed September 1, 2020) and See: Zvonimir Jelinović, Borba Za Jadranske Pruge I Njeni Ekonomski Ciljevi, Građa za gospodarsku povijest Hrvatske 6 (Zagreb: Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, 1957), 156 124 See: Srećko Ignjatović, “Tehnički Podaci Za Prugu Normalnog Kolosijeka Vinkovci – Brčko, 1961. Godine,”, http://vremeplov.ba/index.php/nggallery/page/2?p=10215 (accessed October 13, 2020). 125 See: Peter Jordan, “Die Entwicklung des Eisenbahnnetzes auf dem Gebiet des heutigen Jugoslawien (bis 1918),” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, 29. 126 See: Hauptmann, Die Österreichisch-Ungarische Herrschaft in Bosnien und der Hercegovina 1878–1918, 75; Peter Jordan, “Die Entwicklung des Eisenbahnnetzes auf dem Gebiet des heutigen Jugoslawien (bis 1918),” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, 28. 127 See: Kurt Wessely, “Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung von Bosnien-Herzegowina,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, 551. 32
governor Kállay pressed for an economic leap in his territory.128 Since the governments and parliaments of Hungary and Austria were very reluctant to fund the economic recovery of BiH, once the first, military phase of the occupation was completed, the Bosnian Herzegovinian administration had to deal with the principal of entire financial self-preservation. Only in the beginning, the governor of the province could ask the two parts of the Dual Monarchy for occupational loans to fund railway infrastructure required for military needs.129 The rebuilding of the route Banja Luka-Dobrljin in 1878 and the new Brod-Sarajevo line were financed with such loans,130 but all other sections of the state-owned BH railway system had to be funded with bonds131 or directly with the scarce self-generated budget of the province.132 In addition to the aforementioned regional and interregional connections, a considerable amount of forest lines and other side lines for purely local economic use – such as the 118 km long section from Zavidovići to Eastern Bosnian Kusače133 – were financed with favoured foreign capital investments.134 Even though the building costs in Habsburg BiH were relatively low due to cheap labour – a consequence of high unemployment and widespread poverty, as Šupica points out135 – , the financial straits in the beginning of BiH’s modern infrastructural development had long-lasting effects on the traffic system: while the route Dobrljin–Banja Luka had been constructed in standard gauge because of its designated role as part of an intercontinental main line, all other Bosnian railway routes built by the Austro-Hungarian administration were realised as narrow- gauge-lines with 760 mm width.136 The narrow-gauge railway offered an easier possibility to access remote areas in mountainous terrain. It can be constructed with considerably sharper turns and was therefore much
128 See: Zečević, “Izgradnja željezničkog saobraćaja u Socijalističkoj Republici Bosni i Hercegovini,”: 44–5. 129 See: Hauptmann, Die Österreichisch-Ungarische Herrschaft in Bosnien und der Hercegovina 1878–1918, 37. 130 See: Kurt Wessely, “Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung von Bosnien-Herzegowina,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, 548. 131 See: Hauptmann, Die Österreichisch-Ungarische Herrschaft in Bosnien und der Hercegovina 1878–1918, 68. 132 See: Peter Jordan, “Die Entwicklung des Eisenbahnnetzes auf dem Gebiet des heutigen Jugoslawien (bis 1918),” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, 23. 133 See: Srećko Ignjatović, “Tehnički Podaci Šumske Pruge Zavidovići – Olovo – Kusače, 1901. Godine,”, http://vremeplov.ba/?p=10362 (accessed October 15, 2020). This initially private forest line come later in possession of the BH state railway company, as Map 1 shows. On that map, “Uvor” is indicated as the final station instead of “Kušice”. 134 See: Hauptmann, Die Österreichisch-Ungarische Herrschaft in Bosnien und der Hercegovina 1878–1918, 68. 135 See: Bronislav Šupica, “Gemeinschaft der Jugoslawischen Eisenbahnen,” in Schlagadern der Wirtschaft, 184. 136 See: Kurt Wessely, “Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung von Bosnien-Herzegowina,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, 548–49. 33
cheaper to build than the standard or normal gauge (1435 mm width), which required more tunnels and bridges in challenging topography. However, Austrian engineers and economists in the latter part of the 19th century were also well aware of the disadvantages of the narrow- gauge railway. Firstly, the reloading of commodities from light to normal railway coaches bore considerable costs.137 In that regard, Brod became the main transfer point from Bosnian narrow-gauge to the normal-gauge lines in Croatia.138 Secondly, the transfer capacities of narrow-gauge lines were limited, which was especially problematic as the majority of exported commodities from BiH were bulky, weighty products of the lumber and heavy industries.139 Still, Hauptmann states that up to the turn to the 20th century, narrow-gauge lines met the needs of the evolving capitalist economy in BiH better than often alleged.140 With the subsequent growth of the local industries, however, the weak railway system became a major obstacle to further economic development. After decades of financial troubles and strategic impediment of new connections by Hungary and to a minor degree by Austria as well,141 the stakeholders of the Empire finally agreed to a major railway programme for Bosnia and Herzegovina in late 1912, four years after the occupied province had been officially annexed.142 It stipulated an upgrade from narrow-gauge to standard gauge for the most important sections and also envisaged the building of new routes. 143 Even though this projected, last infrastructural leap was never made, as the World War broke out and voided all calculations, the Austro-Hungarian state apparatus in BiH had – nearly entirely in the years before the official annexation144 – built up a railway system of considerable length. From the inherited 104 kilometres constructed in Ottoman Bosnia, the scheme of state-built routes had expanded to a total of 1048 km before the war, 937 km of
137 See: Walter Krobot, Josef O. Slezak and Hans Sternhart, Schmalspurig Durch Österreich: Geschichte Und Fahrpark Der Schmalspurbahnen Österreichs, 2nd extended edition (Vienna: Verlag Josef Otto Slezak, 1975), 9– 10. 138 See: Kurt Wessely, “Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung von Bosnien-Herzegowina,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, 549. 139 See: Hrelja, “Industrija i saobraćaj u Bosni i Hercegovini 1929.–1941. godine,”: 150. 140 See: Hauptmann, Die Österreichisch-Ungarische Herrschaft in Bosnien und der Hercegovina 1878–1918, 81. 141 See: Dževad Juzbašić, “Der Eisenbahnbau in Bosnien-Herzegowina und die wirtschaftlichen Gegensätze zwischen Österreich und Ungarn,” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, 145, 148, 152-152. 142 See: Murakami, “Die Annexion von Bosnien-Herzegowina und István Burián,”: 67. 143 See: Dževad Juzbašić, “Der Eisenbahnbau in Bosnien-Herzegowina und die wirtschaftlichen Gegensätze zwischen Österreich und Ungarn,” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, 167. 144 See: Zečević, “Izgradnja željezničkog saobraćaja u Socijalističkoj Republici Bosni i Hercegovini,”: 44. 34
which had been realised as narrow-gauge lines according to Wessely.145 Additionally to these state-built main lines, he mentions 580 km of private forest lines, which would make a sum of 1628 km in total. Wessely’s computation, though, should be considered merely as an approximation, as the whereabouts of the missing 7 km standard gauge in this line-up remain unclear. Kemal Hrelja, on the other hand, indicates the length of the BH railway scheme – state-owned and private – with 1684 km in total in 1918, which leads to the conclusion that there was also construction activity during wartime.146 To sum up the situation at the end of Habsburg rule, the railway scheme of BiH was connected with other regions via six railway border crossings: three of them linked Herzegovina to Southern Dalmatia, (two lines ended just across the border in Metković and Dubrovnik respectively, the third one expanded to the bay of Kotor); the private “Steinbeisbahn” linked Western Bosnia to central Dalmatian Knin; the oldest railway border crossing at Dobrljin in the North-West of Bosnia connected Banja Luka to Zagreb; and finally Brod in the North, featuring as the main transfer point from Bosnia to the Habsburg Empire. Additionally, a border crossing existed at Brčko in the North-East. The approximate two km of rail from the Sava to the town,147 however, constitute an extension of the Croatian railway system rather than a part of the BH one, as the section did not connect further to the inland rail network. It can be concluded that the rivalling Austrian and Hungarian imperialisms laid the foundation for the northbound orientation of the BiH railway system, generating weak and scarce connections with the South-East and the West as a side effect. The centralism of the Dual Monarchy even thinned out century old traffic routes; Juzbašić mentions a decline in trade between BiH and Dalmatia induced by the new railway connections to the North, notwithstanding the existence of four (weak) branches to the coast.148 In the decades of Habsburg rule, many relatively independent spaces (sub-regions) of Bosnia and Herzegovina had been pervaded with railway branch lines which attracted industries, became engines of modernisation and brought about a leap in the formation of a common BH space. On the other hand, considerable parts of the annexed province still had no access to
145 See: Kurt Wessely, “Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung von Bosnien-Herzegowina,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, 550. 146 See: See: Hrelja, “Industrija i saobraćaj u Bosni i Hercegovini 1929.–1941. godine,”: 153. 147 See: Google Maps, Walking Distance Between the Brčko Railway Station and the Sava Railway Bridge (2020), https://cutt.ly/Qh5f8ft. 148 See: Dževad Juzbašić, “Der Eisenbahnbau in Bosnien-Herzegowina und die wirtschaftlichen Gegensätze zwischen Österreich und Ungarn,” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, 147. 35
the railway in the time of World War One. This refers particularly to those areas which Singer had named as the richest in 1878, the North-Western Bosnian Krajina and most of Herzegovina.149 The railway system in BiH had been defined by a scarce budget and the need for quick export, it evolved with hard labour and a pressing on natural resources; its development was hampered by the diverging interests of Austria and Hungary and their mutual blockades. Consequently, we may take over Mustafa Imamović’s conclusion that the imperialist policies of the occupants were never shaped by the interests, needs and problems of Bosnia and Herzegovina itself.150 Additionally, macropolitical developments proceeded to the detriment of the province. When Serbia was granted full independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1878 at the Congress of Berlin, the European powers had stipulated that the Principality (elevated to the Kingdom of Serbia in 1882) had to build a railway line from Zemun at its northern border via Belgrade and Niš to the Turkish railway system. With all sections on Serbian and Turkish territory being completed in 1888, the Oriental mainline route started to operate – to the great satisfaction of Hungary via Budapest.151 From that time on, BiH was enduringly side-lined in the long- distance-traffic of South-Eastern Europe, which has affected the country economically and politically until the modern day.
149 See: Singer, Unsere Eisenbahn-Anschlüsse nach Südosten und Süden, 15–16. 150 See: Mustafa Imamović, “Bosnien-Herzegowina bis 1918,” in Der Jugoslawien-Krieg, 80. 151 See: Peter Jordan, “Die Entwicklung des Eisenbahnnetzes auf dem Gebiet des heutigen Jugoslawien (bis 1918),” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, 24. 36
Map 1: The official railway network of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1910 (without the private Steinbeisbahn and other forest lines)152
152 Oberegger, Das offizielle Netz von Bosnien-Herzegowina im Jahre 1910. 37
2.3. Inter-war Yugoslavia
As of the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire as a result of World War I, in which Bosnia and Herzegovina had suffered a severe loss of population,153 the political map of South-Eastern Europe changed once again. When the centralists gained a majority in the contention over the future of the South-Slavic lands, the interim State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (SHS) that had been formed on the territory of the former Dual Monarchy was united with the Kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro to become the Kingdom SHS. In this new constellation from late 1918 onwards, Bosnia was reigned by the Serbian house of Karađorđević.154 It became the geographical heart of the new country and lost its status as a border region which had defined it for centuries. During the heated debates about the administrative design of the new state, the political leaders of the biggest Muslim party could – unlike the Croatian federalists – successfully preserve the geographical outline of BiH and thus a certain amount of regional identity within the restructured Yugoslav territory.155 As Smiljana Đurović points out, the elites of the SHS Kingdom tried to emulate Germany and Italy in forming a capitalist nation state out of distinct historical lands with mainly agrarian societies. In the endeavour to create an integrated market with free circulation of goods and people that promised prosperity, a dense railway network was perceived as crucial.156 Besides the economic benefits, the new leadership was convinced that railway links between all of its formerly unconnected parts would also “contribute to the liquidation of artificially maintained national differences”.157 Despite this intent, the old borders which officially ceased to exist with the proclamation of a single market and free transport in the Kingdom in 1919158 lived on in the minds and deeds of the people. In his article, Salkan Užičanin shows in great detail the unwillingness to overcome the separatism.159 The historian emphasises that the political unification of interwar Yugoslavia, although accompanied by great difficulties, proceeded much quicker than the
153 The total death toll is hard to calculate. Noel Malcolm numbers a demographic loss of 300.000 people between 1910 and 1921, but also points to the fact that this includes the casualties of the Balkan Wars 1912/13 and Muslims fleeing Bosnia to Turkey after 1918. See: Malcolm, Bosnia, 163. 154 See: Ibrahimagić, Državno-pravni razvitak Bosne i Hercegovine, 29. 155 See: Malcolm, Bosnia, 165. 156 See: Đurović, “Problemi ekonomske integracije Jugoslavije 1918 - 1941. godine,”: 179. 157 Ibid., 185. 158 See: Salkan Užičanin, “Privredne Veze Bosne I Hercegovine I Susjeda U Kraljevini Srba, Hrvata I Slovenaca,” Historijska misao 3 (2017): 175. 159 See: ibid. 38
economic one.160 No normal commercial collaboration was possible in the years after WWI because of the persistence of the distinct economic regimes.161 The first step towards spatial integration undertaken by the new government was the reconstruction of the lines that had been destroyed in the war and the subsequent unification of the inherited railway systems, which proved to be challenging. In 1918, four different gauge widths with correspondent coaches and technical facilities existed on Yugoslav soil, the BH narrow-gauge lines with their insufficient capacities being one of them.162 In addition to this obstacle, the economic recovery of the war-ridden Bosnian Herzegovinian lands was hampered by deteriorated rails and a “chronical lack of [railway] coaches”.163 The railway company of the Yugoslav Kingdom established regional directorates in Belgrade, Sarajevo, Zagreb, Subotica and from 1923 on also in Ljubljana. In the mid-1920s, however, they were turned into mere executional bodies, as the railway management became more and more centralised in the Directorate-General in Belgrade.164 Since the very formation of the SHS Kingdom, the districts into which BiH had been divided solicited an extensive railway programme to help them overcome their economic backwardness, but the ministers of the central government regularly put them off, pointing at the weak financial condition of the state. Finally, in 1927 a comprehensive plan for the future railway network of Yugoslavia was adopted, which also envisaged the construction of many urgently needed connections for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Among others, Hrelja lists a link between Banja Luka and Doboj and a new mainline from Belgrade via Sarajevo to Split as the most direct link between the capital and the Adriatic.165 However, the Great Depression hit the country hard and obliterated the plan. Another particularly striking attempt to fix the infrastructural weakness in the southern parts of the state was made in 1936, but also this railway programme – the third for BiH since 1912 – was never implemented, as the disputes about the most expedient routing were protracted until the Kingdom dissolved in the geopolitical rearrangements of the Second World War.166 Even the reconstruction work of the
160 See: ibid., 162. 161 See: ibid., 161. 162 See: Bronislav Šupica, “Gemeinschaft der Jugoslawischen Eisenbahnen,” in Schlagadern der Wirtschaft, 185. 163 Hrelja, “Industrija i saobraćaj u Bosni i Hercegovini 1929.–1941. godine,”: 150. 164 See: Siniša Lajnert, “Ustroj Direkcije Jugoslavenskih Državnih Željeznica Zegreb (1918. – 1941.),” Arhivski vjesnik 60 (2017): 199, 209, 215. 165 See: Hrelja, “Industrija i saobraćaj u Bosni i Hercegovini 1929.–1941. godine,”: 150–1. 166 See: ibid., 152–53. 39
pre-war railway scheme took much longer than expected, e.g. the steepest parts of the Sarajevo–Metković line were not back in service until 1935.167 However, even though none of the projected leaps in the BH railway infrastructure were made in the interwar period, some routes were built that improved the connectivity of the region considerably. The first new project that was implemented was a line from (Bosanski) Novi further to the Bosnian North-West, which reached Bosanska Krupa in 1920 and Bihać in 1924. It was also the first section of the BH railway scheme since 1872 that was constructed as a normal-gauge line.168 Due to enduring financial constraints, most other sections of the expanding railway network in interwar Bosnia were realised in narrow-gauge, though. Alongside the financial ease in the building process itself, this decision can be explained by the existence of the widely ramified Austro-Hungarian 760 mm system.169 Since it has been shown that the budget for a widespread normalisation programme was unattainable, the construction of new routes in 1435 mm width would have only served to render the two systems even more incompatible and created new transhipment costs, a key problem caused by different gauge widths.170 Likewise, a normalisation of the BH mainline Brod–Sarajevo– Metković alone would have prompted the need for numerous new transhipment stations from side lines, thus better connectivity between Croatia to BiH would have come at the price of an internal loss of integration which had already been achieved. In the North-Western Bosnian Krajina, where narrow-gauge lines had never been built, this argument does not apply, which explains the normal-gauge track to Bihać. The first railway link between Bosnia and Serbia was established in 1925, when the route from the border village Vardište at the end of the Bosnian Eastern line to Serbian Užice was completed.171 Since Užice was already connected to Belgrade at that time (via Čačak and Stalać since 1912 and from 1922 on more directly via Čačak, Lajkovac and Mladenovac),172 the
167 See: ibid., 153. 168 See: Zečević, “Izgradnja željezničkog saobraćaja u Socijalističkoj Republici Bosni i Hercegovini,”: 45. 169 See: Peter Jordan, “Die Entwicklung des Eisenbahnnetzes auf dem Gebiet des heutigen Jugoslawien (bis 1918),” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, 24. 170 See: Kurt Wessely, “Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung von Bosnien-Herzegowina,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, 549. 171 See: Hrelja, “Industrija i saobraćaj u Bosni i Hercegovini 1929.–1941. godine,”: 153. 172 See: Jezdimir S. Nikolić, Istorija Železnica Srbije, Vojvodine, Crne Gore I Kosova (Belgrade: Zavod za novinsko- izdavačku i propagandnu delatnost JŽ, 1980), 206, 288-289. Užičanin states that the connection with Belgrade was only established „later“ (after 1925), probably he refers to an even more direct route than the one that can be deduced from Nikolić’s Serbian railway history. See: Užičanin, “Privredne veze Bosne i Hercegovine i susjeda u kraljevini Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca,”: 185. 40
construction of this section made it possible to travel from Sarajevo to the capital of Yugoslavia without the detour through Slavonia, shortening the travel distance between the two cities by 120 km.173 It also established a much more attractive gateway to Belgrade from Southern Dalmatia and linked Sarajevo (at Stalać) to the Balkan mainline running in the direction of Sofia and Constantinople. Thus, Užičanin calls the Vardište–Užice route the only new “communication of high economic importance”174 for BiH in the interwar period, even though its track ran nearly the entire length in Serbia. Furthermore, Zečević names the following newly-built routes as important railway projects for interwar-BiH: the line from Ugljevik in North-Eastern Bosnia via Bijeljina to Bosanska Rača at today’s Serbian-Bosnian border, completed in 1925 and mainly used to evacuate coal from the Tuzla basin eastwards.175 On the Serbian side, a route had been constructed from Šid to Sremska Rača in 1912,176 but the two lines remained separated by the Sava until a railway bridge was built in 1934.177 Interestingly, a link between Ugljevik and Tuzla was – judging by the absence of the topic in the available sources – never on the agenda of infrastructure planners. Besides the above-mentioned section, Zečević’s list of realised railway projects includes a branch departing from the Herzegovinian line at Trebinje and leading northwards to Bileća, completed in 1931; a branch departing from the Eastern line at Ustiprača and leading southwards to Foča, completed in 1939; and, even though not in Bosnia and Herzegovina itself, very important for its economy, the extension from the Neretva harbour Metković to the coast town of Ploče/Aleksandrovo178, which finally solved the problem of the inefficiently shallow port of the former.179
173 See: Nikolić, Istorija železnica Srbije, Vojvodine, Crne gore i Kosova, 156. 174 Užičanin, “Privredne veze Bosne i Hercegovine i susjeda u kraljevini Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca,”: 185. 175 See: Zečević, “Izgradnja željezničkog saobraćaja u Socijalističkoj Republici Bosni i Hercegovini,”: 45. A post in a Serbian railway forum challenges Zečević’s proposition and states, fortified with photographs, that the route Ugljevik-Biljeljina-Bosanska Rača had already been built by the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1917/1918 in 0.60 m gauge and amended in Yugoslav times (1920-1922) to the typical Bosnian narrow-gauge-width of 0.76 m. See: User name: Cira-1, “Pruga Bosanska Rača – Bijeljina – Ugljevik,”, https://www.zeleznice.in.rs/forum/viewtopic.php?t=237 (accessed October 16, 2020). 176 See: Ljiljana Dobrovšak, “Zaposlenici Na Željeznicama U Hrvatskoj 1903. Godine,” Časopis za suvremenu povijest 40, no. 2 (2008): 494. 177 See: Info Bijeljina, “Most Na Rači,”, https://www.infobijeljina.com/vijesti/most-na-raci (accessed October 15, 2020). 178 In the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Ploče was called Aleksandrovo. See: Antun Stipetić, Željko Bagić and Martin Starčević, “Influence of Railway on the Development of the Port of Ploče,” Promet 18, no. 6 (2006): 423. 179 See: Zečević, “Izgradnja željezničkog saobraćaja u Socijalističkoj Republici Bosni i Hercegovini,”: 45. 41
This last project, however, was only completed in 1942,180 when the Kingdom had already ceased to exist and both BiH and Dalmatia were administered by the Croatian national- socialist puppet-state. Hence, the isolation of the Adriatic ports from the inlands of the state remained one of the most striking economic obstacles of the Yugoslav Kingdom until its dissolution, as all the envisaged mainlines from Serbia through BiH were part of programmes that were never implemented.181 In monarchist times, the best link between Belgrade and Southern Dalmatia was the insufficient narrow-gauge route via Višegrad and Sarajevo to the insufficient harbour of Metković. Another long-discussed project to enhance the connectivity between central Croatia and the coast was the so-called “Unska pruga” (railway route alongside the river Una), that would connect Zagreb via Bihać to the Dalmatian railway junction Knin and on to Split. After the completion of an alternative route from Zagreb to Knin that was aligned entirely along the territory of today’s Croatia (Lička pruga), the Una line became less of a priority for Zagreb. Dalmatian and Bosnian business people, however, urged for its realisation, which was started in 1936, but could not be completed before the outbreak of World War II.182 In contrast, another cross-regional route could start to operate three years before the war hit Yugoslavia, when Southern-Herzegovinian Bileća was finally linked to Nikšić in today’s Montenegro in 1938.183 Since the bay of Kotor traditionally belonged to Dalmatia and became a part of Montenegro only after 1945,184 this can be considered the first railway link between BiH and Montenegro. To sum up, some progress in the connectivity of BiH was made in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, but Zečević’s assessment that the region received “a wide network of railway lines”185 between 1918 and 1941 is a strong exaggeration. In relation to what had been planned and expected, the development of the BH railway system remained negligible.
180 See: ibid. 181 See: Đurović, “Problemi ekonomske integracije Jugoslavije 1918 - 1941. godine,”: 185. 182 See: Jelinović, Borba za jadranske pruge i njeni ekonomski ciljevi, 154–55 and Elmar Oberegger, “Una-Bahn,” in Zur Eisenbahngeschichte des Alpen-donau-Adria-Raumes, ed. Elmar Oberegger (2006–2008), http://www.oberegger2.org/enzyklopaedie/una.htm. 183 See: Đurović, “Problemi ekonomske integracije Jugoslavije 1918 - 1941. godine,”: 185 and Srećko Ignjatović, “Šeme Stanica Uzane Pruge Hum – Bileća – Nikšić (Titograd), 1960. Godine,”, http://vremeplov.ba/?p=9429 (accessed August 28, 2020) 184 See: Oberegger, Das offizielle Netz von Bosnien-Herzegowina im Jahre 1910. 185 Zečević, “Izgradnja željezničkog saobraćaja u Socijalističkoj Republici Bosni i Hercegovini,”: 45. 42
In the 22 years of its existence, interwar Yugoslavia built 1840 km new railway lines, of which only 176 km (9%) were allotted to the soil of today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina,186 even though it comprised roughly 20% of the state’s territory187 and had a much weaker infrastructural point of departure than Slovenia, Croatia or the Vojvodina.188 Due to this, Hrelja writes about an “obvious disregard” of BiH in the railway policy of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Besides the region’s neglect in new construction projects, the Bosnian Herzegovinian economy also suffered from “the perpetuation of the narrow-gauge system, negligent management of and corruption in the railway company and [as already mentioned above] from the lack of coaches and the bad condition of the fleet.”189 If we add the 176 km newly-built railway lines to the 1684 km built before 1918, we can assume a Bosnian Herzegovinian route network of 1860 km on the eve of WWII, given that all formerly private side and forest lines built in the Austro-Hungarian period were included in the scheme of the Yugoslav state railways. Such calculations, however, can be conducted only in retrospective, as Bosnia and Herzegovina had not existed as an administrative unit since 1921. After the Putsch led by King Aleksander I Karađođević in 1929, even its outline vanished from the map (for the first time in 400 years), when all of the state’s historical regions were erased and the territory became restructured in ahistorical and transethnic banovine.190 Summing up the connectivity of BiH, we may note the following: in addition to the six railway lines that linked the region with the neighbouring Habsburg provinces at the end of Austro- Hungarian rule, three more interregional lines were operating on the eve of Second World War: one from Ugljevik in North-Eastern Bosnia via Rača to Northern Serbia, not connected to the rest of the BH network; one between Eastern Bosnia and central Serbia, connecting Belgrade (via Vardište) to Sarajevo and on to Southern Dalmatia; and one that linked Sarajevo via Herzegovinian Bileća to Montenegrin Nikšić. Since all three new routes were realised as narrow-gauge lines, the connection from Banja Luka (or Bihać respectively) via Dobrljin to
186 48% were constructed in Serbia (with Vojvodina), 24% in Croatia, 12% in Makedonia, 4% in Montenegro and 3% in Slovenia. See: Hrelja, “Industrija i saobraćaj u Bosni i Hercegovini 1929.–1941. godine,”: 153. 187 Own calculation based on the annexed territory of BiH by Austro-Hungary. See: Kurt Wessely, “Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung von Bosnien-Herzegowina,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, 528–29. 188 See: Peter Jordan, “Die Entwicklung des Eisenbahnnetzes auf dem Gebiet des heutigen Jugoslawien (bis 1918),” in Eisenbahnbau und Kapitalinteressen in den Beziehungen der österreichischen mit den südslawischen Ländern, 27. 189 See: Hrelja, “Industrija i saobraćaj u Bosni i Hercegovini 1929.–1941. godine,”: 154. 190 See: Malcolm, Bosnia, 168–69. 43
Zagreb remained – five decades after its completion – the only interregional standard-gauge border crossing for BiH. The northbound orientation of the BH transport routes that had been established and strengthened during the Austro-Hungarian decades stayed in place for the whole inter-war period. Even though the economic ties with most of the former Habsburg space were cut, this direction was still topical and beneficial, as the North-Western parts of the new state – Slovenia, central Croatia and the breadbasket Slavonia - constituted the economically and industrially most developed ones. Additionally, the traffic route to the east that had been prevalent in Ottoman times was revived by the link between Eastern Bosnia and Serbia. Except for this insufficient line, however, the political centre of the Yugoslav lands was still isolated from the BH space. Moreover, no access for Serbia through BiH to the big ports in central Dalmatia was achieved. Thus, the west as the most critical transport direction for both the region and the whole state remained unexploited. Concerning the integration of the BH region itself, improved railway access was ensured in Southern Herzegovina. In the North-Western and Eastern Herzegovina, however, big white spots were left on the railway map on the eve of World War II. Furthermore, the Western and the Eastern part of Bosnia were still detached from each other except for the low-capacity Steinbeisbahn through rough mountain terrain.
44
Map 2: Railway map of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, printed in 1937 on the back of a train ticket191
2.4. Socialist Yugoslavia
When the Yugoslav state was rebuilt after World War II as a socialist federation under the dictatorial reign of the communist party, the historical regions were reestablished as constitutive “sovereign republics”, Bosnia and Herzegovina being one of them.192 In the fierce battles fought on its soil, the railway infrastructure of BiH was severely damaged.193 With the focus on its rebuilding and immediate extension as part of the central government’s first Five-year plan (1947–1951),194 it became clear that the railway was not only the “backbone of the capitalist production system”,195 as Đurović points out for the first
191 Železnička Karta Kraljevine Jugoslavije (Državne železnice Jugoslavije, 1937); Made accessible online by Raphael Krammer, http://www.kosrail.de/jdz.html (accessed August 28, 2020). 192 See: Malcolm, Bosnia, 194. 193 See: Zečević, “Izgradnja željezničkog saobraćaja u Socijalističkoj Republici Bosni i Hercegovini,”: 46. 194 See: ibid. 195 See: Đurović, “Problemi ekonomske integracije Jugoslavije 1918 - 1941. godine,”: 184. 45
half of the 20th century, but also a crucial component of the socialist strategy for exploitation of resources and economic growth. In the first years after the war, many political enemies of socialism were forced to work in infrastructural projects alongside a mass of juvenile “volunteers” from different states, who were advertised as social activists, but at times had to be convinced by intimidation and threats of sanctions.196 By resorting to such means, the Titoist regime could rely on cheap labour to ensure the expensive and cumbersome (re)construction of a Yugoslav traffic network. For BiH, the “youth work actions” meant a considerable rise in connectivity. Zečević explains that the routes Brčko–Banovići, Šamac–Sarajevo and Doboj–Banja Luka were the most important railway projects realised under this slogan. All of them were built in standard gauge.197 Brčko had been linked to the Croatian railway system since the Sava bridge was built in 1894.198 In 1946, the line was extended southwards to Banovići in the industrial and mining region of Tuzla to supply the country with coal. The route from Sarajevo to Šamac, constructed in 1947, was also of high importance, as it finally provided a high-capacity connection from the BH capital to the main Yugoslav transport axis Belgrade–Zagreb. The completion (in 1951) of the direct link between Banja Luka and Doboj, in turn, made the immense detour from Sarajevo to Banja Luka via Jajce and the mountain range of Srnetica unnecessary and increased the connectivity between the Eastern and the North-Western part of BiH.199 Apart from these propagandised youth schemes, the narrow-gauge line to central-Bosnian Bugojno was further extended to Gornji Vakuf in 1945.200 Of much greater importance, however, was the completion of the long-projected Una line, the construction of which had been obstructed by the war. It started to operate in 1948 between Zagreb, Bihać and Knin, where it was further linked to the Dalmatian ports of Šibenik and Split.201 According to a Serbian railway forum, the weak rail link between Bijeljina in the Bosnian North- East and Serbian Šid was replaced by a standard-gauge line. It included a new Sava bridge that was completed in 1950 as the last part of the route and replaced the original bridge that had
196 See: Zečević, “Izgradnja željezničkog saobraćaja u Socijalističkoj Republici Bosni i Hercegovini,”: 47–8. 197 See: ibid., 48. 198 See: Srećko Ignjatović, “Tehnički podaci za prugu normalnog kolosijeka Vinkovci – Brčko, 1961. godine,”. 199 See: Zečević, “Izgradnja željezničkog saobraćaja u Socijalističkoj Republici Bosni i Hercegovini,”: 48. 200 See: ibid., 52. 201 See: ibid. 46
been destroyed in the war.202 This information seems reliable, as the standard-gauge line is included in a 1956 map of the Yugoslav railway network.203 In 1952, Bosnia and Serbia were linked by yet another railway, when Eastern Bosnian Zvornik got access to the Serbian normal-gauge railway system.204 Technically, however, the territory of BiH did not receive any new rail infrastructure, as the railway station Zvornik Grad was erected on the Serbian side of the river Drina, right next to a bridge that linked it to the old town of Zvornik.205 Since my focus is on connectivity, I count this route as a BH railway border crossing, nevertheless. On the Bosnian side, Zvornik remained isolated from the train network until early 1992, when the route to Tuzla was completed as the last railway section in socialist Yugoslavia,206 finally establishing an interregional west-east corridor through BiH, only weeks before the republic declared independence and the Bosnian War started. All of the above-mentioned routes were built during the period of "administrative socialism", the first of several phases in Yugoslavia’s economic development. Emulating the Soviet model, it constituted a centralised top-down approach towards a planned economy. The federal government was in charge of all enterprises, investment in infrastructure and industrialisation was paid by high taxation of agriculture and other "non-socialist sectors" of the economy.207 According to the classification by Danijel Kežić, the years from 1952 to 1954 served as a transformational period towards the so-called "new economic system", which was fully implemented in 1955 and stayed in place up unil 1963. This phase was marked by a shift from the federal state as the solely responsible body towards decentralisation and self- administration with the goal of a more efficient planned economy. Republics, autonomous provinces, municipalities and enterprises received planning sovereignty and were entrusted with the self-administration of their own investment funds without strict obligation to abide by the framework plan of the superior level. This, however, led to unrealistic and weakly
202 See: User name: Pecelj, “Pruga Bosanska Rača – Bijeljina – Ugljevik,”, https://www.zeleznice.in.rs/forum/viewtopic.php?t=237&start=10 (accessed October 16, 2020). 203 See: Map 3 204 See: Nikolić, Istorija železnica Srbije, Vojvodine, Crne gore i Kosova, 400. 205 See: Mapcarta (Železnička Stanica Zvornik Grad, 2020), https://mapcarta.com/18718168 (accessed October 26, 2020). 206 See: Mišo Lazarević, “Prije 20 Godina Prošao Je Prvi Voz Saobraćajnicom Tuzla - Zvornik,” klix.ba, January 18, 2012, https://www.klix.ba/vijesti/bih/prije-20-godina-prosao-je-prvi-voz-saobracajnicom-tuzla- zvornik/120117156 (accessed October 19, 2020). 207 Kežić, Bauen für den Einheitsstaat, 39f. 47
coordinated investment plans and the emergence of particularism, where the small entities pursued their own economic interests to the detriment of the state as a whole.208 In detail, the new economic policy facilitated the extensive commencement of new (regional) investment projects, before the older (federal) ones were finished, which, in turn, increased the overall investment costs to a point where the ripcord had to be pulled and some projects had to be suspended. Until 1951, the state had invested most in the less developed republics and regions – BiH, Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo – with the goal of levelling the inequality within Yugoslavia. In the course of the 1950s, after heated debate, the priorities in the economic development were shifted and regionally important railway routes such as the standard-gauge line between Sarajevo and Ploče were deferred.209 Another significant project was still realised during the transformational period, before the decentralised “new economic system” gravely hindered the underdeveloped republic’s access to investment funds:210 In 1953 the Tuzla basin received a direct link to the West with the normal-gauge railway route Tuzla–Doboj.211 Now, the industrial region was one of the best-connected spaces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with high-capacity routes to both the North and the West, but still not to Serbia in the East.
208 See: ibid., 41–43. 209 See: ibid., 47, 51, 52. 210 See: ibid., 55. 211 See: Zečević, “Izgradnja željezničkog saobraćaja u Socijalističkoj Republici Bosni i Hercegovini,”: 52. 48
Map 3: Map of the Yugoslav railway network from 1956, cropped. Fat lines: direct international traffic. Medium lines: other standard-gauge routes. Thin lines: narrow-gauge routes.212
The standard-gauge line between Sarajevo and Ploče, in turn, very expensive due to the mountainous terrain, was first completed in 1965 (according to Zečević) or 1968 (according to Šmid and Štrumbl, probably referring to its electrification), after seven to ten years of construction work. The route comprised 106 tunnels with a total length of 36.6 km and offered the fastest access to the sea not only for Sarajevo, but also for Belgrade.213 Including this broadened infrastructural lifeline, approximately 838 km new railway lines had been built in the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1945. It must be noted that due to several inaccuracies and possibly incomplete information, this figure is only a
212 Karta Železničke Mreže FNR Jugoslavije (Yugoslav Railways, 1956); JŽ Timetable 1956/1957, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yugoslavia_Railway-Lines_1956.jpg (accessed October 15, 2020). 213 See: Zečević, “Izgradnja željezničkog saobraćaja u Socijalističkoj Republici Bosni i Hercegovini,”: 52 and Gašper Šmid and Žarko Štrumbl, “Dolina Rijeke Bosne Kroz Željezničko Okno,” Glasnik arhiva i Arhivističkog udruženja Bosne i Hercegovine 45 (2015): 267. 49
rough approximation.214 As no sources indicate the construction of further routes (except for the connection Tuzla–Zvornik, completed in 1992,215 and the small section of the Belgrade– Bar line that crossed Eastern Bosnia216), we can assume that the BH railway system reached its peak in 1965 with a total length of approximately 2360 km. This number is derived from the pre-WWII-network of 1860 km plus the 838 km built since 1945 minus the 338 km of suspended narrow-gauge routes next to new normal-gauge routes.217 Again, this figure constitutes a mere approximation for comparison with earlier and later periods. At that point, there were 13 or 14 railway border crossings to other socialist republics of Yugoslavia, half of them in narrow gauge (NG) and half in standard gauge (SG). Croatia was, both for geographical and historical reasons, the best-connected neighbour of BiH, with seven or eight crossings, cited clockwise: Hum–Dubrovnik (NG), Sarajevo–Ploče via Metković (SG), the Steinbeisbahn from Srnetica to Knin (NG), the Una line from Bihać to Knin via Martin Brod (SG), the first connection Banja Luka–Zagreb via Dobrljin (SG), potentially still the old transfer
214 The figure is self-calculated out of the following route-lengths: Brčko-Banovići: 92 km, Doboj-Banja Luka: 90km. See: Zečević, “Izgradnja željezničkog saobraćaja u Socijalističkoj Republici Bosni i Hercegovini,”: 48; Šamac–Sarajevo: 242 km. See: Sead Selimović, “Prilike U Oblasti Zanatstva Na Podrucju Tuzlanskog Kraja U Periodu 1945.-1953. Godine,” Arhivska praksa 17 (2014): 462; Bugojno–Gornji Vakuf: 18 km. See: Šmid and Štrumbl, “Dolina rijeke Bosne kroz željezničko okno,”: 267; Bihać–Knin without the part on Croatian territory: 69 km. See: Jelinović, Borba za jadranske pruge i njeni ekonomski ciljevi, 144 + own calculation; Bijeljina–Rača: 30 km. Own calculation; Tuzla–Doboj: 60 km. See: Srećko Ignjatović, “Šeme Stanica Normalnog Kolosijeka Pruge Doboj Novi – Tuzla, 1955. Godine,”, https://vremeplov.ba/?p=16752 (accessed October 19, 2020) + own calculation. Sarajevo–Ploče on BH territory: 169 km. See: Zavod za novinsko-izdavačko i propagandnu delatnost JŽ, “Pruga Sarajevo-Ploče,”, http://vremeplov.ba/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/pruga-sarajevo-ploce.pdf (accessed October 19, 2020), 10 + own calculation; additional short narrow-gauge lines, mostly for industrial means: 68 km. See: Srećko Ignjatović, “Izgradnja Normalnog Kolosijeka Doboj – Tuzla, 1947./1951. Godine,”, http://photogalerija.com/?p=8584 (accessed October 19, 2020). 215 See: Lazarević, “Prije 20 godina prošao je prvi voz saobraćajnicom Tuzla - Zvornik,”. 216 The ambitious project of a railway route from Belgrade to the Montenegrin seaport Bar was completed in 1976 after decades of planning and building activities. At a length of 12 km, its route crosses the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since the only stop in BiH is a village (Štrpci) without any towns nearby, the route did not impact the railway connectivity of BiH. Thus, I do not count it as a BH railway line. See: Kežić, Bauen für den Einheitsstaat, 335; Amir Halilović and Alija Suljić, “Granični (Teritorijalni) Sporovi Bosne I Hercegovine Sa Susjednim Državama,” Geografija 12 (2016), http://www.bosnjaci.net/prilog.php?pid=61159 (accessed October 22, 2020). 217 The figure 338 km is self-calculated out of the following suspended narrow-gauge-routes up until 1965: Doboj- Zenica: 80 km. See: Forum historija.ba, “Otvorena Uzana Pruga Sarajevo-Bosanski Brod,”, https://www.historija.ba/d/229-otvorena-uzana-pruga-sarajevo-bosanski-brod/ (accessed October 19, 2020) + own calculation; Bijeljina-Rača: 20 km. See: User name: Pecelj, “Pruga Bosanska Rača – Bijeljina – Ugljevik,” + own calculation; Tuzla–Doboj: 60 km. See: Srećko Ignjatović, “Šeme stanica normalnog kolosijeka pruge Doboj Novi – Tuzla, 1955. godine,” + own calculation; Sarajevo–Ploče (without the part on Croatian territory): 178 km. See: Sto Godina Željeznice U Bosni I Hercegovini (ŽTP Sarajevo, 1971), 6–7. Cited after Wikipedia, “Željeznička Pruga Sarajevo – Ploče,”, https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BDeljezni%C4%8Dka_pruga_Sarajevo_%E2%80%93_Plo%C4%8De#cite_not e-10 (accessed October 19, 2020). Zečević, on the other hand, mentions a length of 134.7 km for the route, which must obviously be an error, as a look on the map makes clear. See: Zečević, “Izgradnja željezničkog saobraćaja u Socijalističkoj Republici Bosni i Hercegovini,”: 45. 50
point Brod (NG),218 the new main connection from Sarajevo to Croatia via Šamac (SG) and the line from the Tuzla basin to Vinkovci via Brčko (SG). Serbia had only four railway links with BiH, from North to South: Bijeljina–Šid via Rača (SG), further connected to Ugljevik in the Tuzla basin but not to the rest of the BH railway system; Zvornik–Šabac (SG), also isolated from the BH railway system; and the only direct links between Sarajevo and Serbia with the two branched crossings at Vardište and Uvac (NG). In the South, Herzegovina had two railway border crossings with Montenegro, between Uskoplje and Herceg Novi (NG) and between Trebinje and Nikšić (NG). Concerning the internal integration of the Bosnian Herzegovinian space, the filling of some gaps was achieved, but the bulk of the post-WWII achievement concerned the enhancement of capacity on the mainlines through the normalisation of pre-existing communications rather than the connection of new areas to the railway network. The Western and Eastern Herzegovina were still white spots on the map, as was the mountainous space between Sarajevo and Central Dalmatia. All important towns in BiH had railway stations, yet a look at Map 3 shows that the density of side lines in rural areas could not be compared with the Northern parts of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), as the state was called since 1963.219 Only one year after the completion of the standard-gauge route Sarajevo–Ploče had marked the final point of the BH railway network extension, a development occurred that led to BiH’s subsequent diminution of rail infrastructure and a dramatic loss of connectivity: from 1966 until 1978, one by one all narrow-gauge lines on BH territory were suspended.220 This development was not unique to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The rising competition posed by road traffic made railway lines unprofitable in many regions, in the 1960s the concept of small-scale rail-bound transport also seemed outdated in Central Europe.221 Nikolić indicates that from that time onwards, over 2000 km narrow-gauge lines on Yugoslav territory were
218 It is not clear if the interregional railway traffic at Brod was suspended when the normal-gauge line Sarajevo- Šamac was completed. 219 See: Ibrahimagić, Državno-pravni razvitak Bosne i Hercegovine, 37. 220 See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, “Historija,”, https://www.zfbh.ba/o-nama/historija/ (accessed October 20, 2020). 221 See: Krobot, Slezak and Sternhart, Schmalspurig durch Österreich, 7. 51
completely suspended or normalised, most of them in Serbia.222 In the decade between 1965 and 1974, roughly 60 percent of Yugoslav narrow-gauge lines faced this fate.223 In Bosnia and Herzegovina, however, the low percentage of standard gauge in the railway network coincided with long-lasting difficulties to fund infrastructural projects. The decade in a totally decentralised economic system had constantly widened the gap between BiH and the more developed parts of Yugoslavia, and the economic reform of 1965 only served to decelerate the widening instead of closing the gap, as Sundhaussen points out.224 That reform was the starting point for a major transition from the “new economic system” to “socialist self-administration” (also called “socialist market economy”), fully implemented in 1971 and staying in place until the end of socialist Yugoslavia.225 Hereinafter, I shall outline how the changes in the macroeconomic environment of Yugoslavia influenced the organisation of the railway system and rendered investment in new normal-gauge lines in BiH impossible. In the highly fragmented economic system of the late 1950s, the Yugoslav railways (JŽ) had remained centralised, economically inefficient and highly subsidised. Only in 1961 was the last remainder of early “administrative socialism” divided and reorganised into 29 financially independent companies, with the goal of making them profitable in a more competitive economy. On a republican level, the respective railway companies founded communities, which, in turn, joined into the “Community of Yugoslav Railways” on federal level.226 Notwithstanding, the railway system suffered from the subsequent particularism in the same way that the industrial sector did. The “29 different investment policies”227 led, in combination with the still centralised tariff system, to even more inefficiency. To tackle the macroeconomic problem of high debt due to inefficient over-investment that the state was unable to pay off, the 1965 reform brought a “radical decrease of the investment volume”.228 Moreover, the more developed – and thus more competitive – republics profited more from the plan to reduce the necessity of state funding by giving greater weight to profitability. The goals of the reform, however, were not reached.229
222 See: Nikolić, Istorija železnica Srbije, Vojvodine, Crne gore i Kosova, 386. 223 See: Oleg Zinam, “Evaluation of Transport Capacity in Yugoslavia,” in East European Transport Regions and Modes, 171. 224 See: Holm Sundhaussen, Jugoslawien Und Seine Nachfolgestaaten 1943–2011: Eine Ungewöhnliche Geschichte Des Gewöhnlichen, 2nd revised edition (Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2014), 173. 225 Kežić, Bauen für den Einheitsstaat, 39–40. 226 See: ibid., 75–76. 227 Ibid., 77. 228 See: ibid., 101. 229 See: ibid., 94, 104. 52
When, in 1965, the transport tariffs were finally liberalised, BiH chose, like Croatia and Serbia, to recentralise the six railway companies within its scope on a republican level to prevent chaos in the field of pricing. Further large-scale changes in the political and macroeconomic system of Yugoslavia, such as the extensive amendments to the constitution between 1967 and 1971 that turned the centralist state de-facto into a con-federation, led to a total shift of authority in the BH railway sector to the republican level.230 In late 1970, with the reallocation of state capital to the six republics, they also took over the enormous state debt.231 Regardless of the budgetary deficit, the republics did not allow their railway companies to set tariffs high enough to cover the real transport costs, in order to prevent disadvantages for their export industries. This further increased the build-up of debts, which had to be reduced by the illiquid republics.232 In this situation, the construction of new lines was beyond feasibility. Instead, the BH railway company and its counterparts in the other republics – only loosely coordinated in the Community of Yugoslav Railways – concentrated since the late 1960s on the modernisation of mainlines.233 In 1975 they identified “insufficient and outdated capacities, partially incorrect investment and constantly rising transport needs”234 as main challenges. Despite the dynamic development of Yugoslav road traffic,235 the railway was in that year still promoted as the “most important transport mode”.236 The preservation and extension of the narrow-gauge system, in which costs outweighed the economic benefit since the proliferation of cars and busses, was perceived as a key strategic mistake; its discontinuation was seen as a necessary step towards ensuring the financial sustainability of the transport system. Investment in the mainlines concentrated on electrification and the replacement of steam-driven locomotives by diesel engines, an endeavour in which considerable achievements were made:237 There was a fivefold increase
230 See: ibid., 80–120. 231 See: ibid., 113. 232 See: ibid., 135. 233 See: Bronislav Šupica, “Gemeinschaft der Jugoslawischen Eisenbahnen,” in Schlagadern der Wirtschaft, 191. 234 See: ibid. 235 See: Kežić, Bauen für den Einheitsstaat, 134. 236 Bronislav Šupica, “Gemeinschaft der Jugoslawischen Eisenbahnen,” in Schlagadern der Wirtschaft, 191. 237 See: Oleg Zinam, “Evaluation of Transport Capacity in Yugoslavia,” in East European Transport Regions and Modes, 171. 53
in electrified lines between 1965 and 1974 in Yugoslavia;238 in BiH the rate of electrification corresponded to 81.2% of lines by 1990.239 The abandonment of narrow-gauge lines resulted in a continuous decline in the number of JŽ passengers between 1960 and 1972; at the same time the average travel distance per passenger increased. Hence, Šupica concludes, in the passenger sector, the investment in transport quality and modernisation of the rolling stock led to the development of the JŽ towards a long-distance transport mode mainly for commercial customers.240 All these steps were taken against the background of a steady rise in overall mobility within the Yugoslav space and beyond, caused, amongst other factors, by rapid domestic growth, massively increasing personal passenger travel, pushing tourism and incremental international trade.241
“Between 1952 and 1976, the volume of freight and passenger carriage increased more than sevenfold; about 30,000 kilometers of road and more than 2,000 kilometers of railway were built and/or modernized, while the merchant fleet capacity increased almost five times.”242
This quote depicts the dynamic development of mobility in general, however it conflates rail and road traffic on the one hand and passenger and freight carriage on the other hand. If one calculates using the figures for freight volume of the Yugoslav railway alone, as offered by Po- Chih Lee, the annual growth per kilometre and ton throughout the above-mentioned period amounted to approximately 4.7%, equalling a 2.7-fold increase in total.243 Subsequently, the bulk of the increase was borne by road transport. The disproportional development of the two most significant transport modes between 1952 and 1976 is also evident from the demand side: “While the demand for the services of the railways has not grown significantly, the demand for road transport has been growing at the rate of 20 percent per year.”244 The “great
238 See: ibid. 239 See: Mirsad Kulović, “Stanje I Mogućnost Uključivanja Saobraćaja BiH U Evropski Saobraćajni Sistem,” Promet 2, 5-6 (1990): 241, http://traffic.fpz.hr/index.php/PROMTT/article/view/362/225 (accessed December 30, 2020). 240 See: Šupica 1975: 196, 198. 241 See: Oleg Zinam, “Evaluation of Transport Capacity in Yugoslavia,” in East European Transport Regions and Modes, 166. 242 Ibid. 243 Annual growth rate and total increase are self-calculated based on the figures from the following table, offering data for the years 1953–1975. See: Po-Chih Lee, “A Dynamic Demand Model for Freight Transport on Railroads in Eastern Europe,” in East European Transport Regions and Modes, ed. Bogdan Mieczkowski, 235–56 (The Hague: Springer, Dordrecht, 1980), 255. 244 Oleg Zinam, “Evaluation of Transport Capacity in Yugoslavia,” in East European Transport Regions and Modes, 167. 54
pressure on the capacity of the transportation system”245 urged the Yugoslav republics to invest more in the transport mode whose preferential treatment had spiralled into an ever- rising need for more infrastructure, leaving the railway behind both in popularity and governmental attention. With its car-centred thinking, Yugoslavia was in line with most developed countries of the world, both capitalist and socialist. The fundamental flaws in demand-driven transport planning only became apparent much later; in this work they are dealt with in Chapter 4. From 1960 onwards, Yugoslavia produced more passenger cars than lorries, according to Jozef Wilczynski a development that is generally perceived as a “turning point” in the history of a country’s transport development.246 In 1976, motorisation in Yugoslavia meant 73 passenger cars per 1000 inhabitants (pc/1000 i), a figure below the world average of 89. By comparison, the USA led the statistics with 528; in Austria the rate amounted to 239, in East Germany (the strongest motorised socialist country) to 122, in the USSR only to 20.247 However, the ruling communist parties did not intend to surrender to the “explosion of demand for personal passenger transportation”,248 as the following quote from 1980 makes clear.
“[...] according to present thinking, the socialist authorities, even when these countries can afford it, would like to keep the figure within the range of 100 - 200 cars per 1,000 of pupulation [sic]. The experience of the capitalist countries with a high degree of "automobilization" (200 or more) has been carefully studied, and it is widely accepted among the experts in the field that at these levels, social cost exceeds social benefit. It appears that, in contrast to capitalist countries, public transport will continue being given high priority in the socialist countries.”249
Notwithstanding Wilczynski’s proposition, the motorisation rate in the Yugoslav republics continued to grow consistently. In 1980, pc/1000 i in the SFRY as a whole had reached already 111,250 an enormous increase by more than one third within four years. A table with data extracted by Lyubomir Pozharliev from the Yugoslav Federal Statistical Institute shows that another year later, the number of passenger cars per thousand households in the Republic of
245 Ibid., 166. 246 Jozef Wilczynski, “The Passenger Car and Socialist Economic Planning,” in East European Transport Regions and Modes, 266. 247 See: ibid., 277. 248 Oleg Zinam, “Evaluation of Transport Capacity in Yugoslavia,” in East European Transport Regions and Modes, 166. 249 Jozef Wilczynski, “The Passenger Car and Socialist Economic Planning,” in East European Transport Regions and Modes, 280. 250 See: Marinković, “Stepen motorizacije u Srbiji, Republici Srpskoj, Federaciji BIH, Crnoj Gori iSjevernoj Makedoniji,”: 47. 55
BiH exceeded 300.251 The figure is not comparable to the others, as the source does not indicate how many people then lived in one household. Whereas the annual railway investment in Yugoslavia (rolling stock and infrastructure combined) was increased from 8,232 million Din. in 1977 to 14,366 million Din. in 1980 according to an ECMT statistic, capital expenditure on commercial road vehicles alone rose from 13,400 to 32,300 million Din. in the same period. Data on the total annual investment sum in road transport is missing for Yugoslavia; however, the statistic indicates a manyfold higher road-related than rail-related spending for all other 15 (Western) European countries with complete data.252 Since it has been shown before that the SFRY followed the same macro transport development trends than capitalist countries, it can be assumed that also in Yugoslavia, the bulk of transport investment was allocated to meet the needs of individual road traffic. Despite the upheaval of the transport system, the potential of the railway to reach its users stayed intact. Đuro Marić states that due to the impact of industrialisation processes on urbanisation and the development of new residential areas, about 70% of BH settlements are located along railway lines. Since his statistic source dates from 1983, this probably refers to the standard-gauge lines, as the narrow-gauge scheme had already been suspended by that time.253
2.5. Internal and inter-republican railway connections of BiH on the eve of the Yugoslav Wars
This last part of the railway history of socialist Bosnia and Herzegovina shows the passenger train schedules between the biggest cities and towns of the republic and lists all passenger connections from BiH to other parts of the federal state in early 1990. As mentioned above, after 27 years without the opening of new railway routes, an important project was finished in January 1992: with the construction of the section between Tuzla and
251 It is not indicated how many people lived in one household then. See: Pozharliev Pozharliev, “Collectivity Vs. Connectivity: Highway Peripheralization in Former Yugoslavia (1940s–1980s),” Journal of Transport History 37, no. 2 (2016): 207, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0022526616667134 (accessed January 6, 2021). 252 See: Trends in Transport Investment and Expenditure in 1980. Statistical Report on Road Accidents in 1981 [28th Annual Report. Activity of the Conference] Volume II (Paris: OECD Publishing, 1984), https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=8UhcAQAAQBAJ&hl=de&pg=GBS.PA2 (accessed March 18, 2021), 27. 253 See: Marić, “Corridor Vc as a factor of integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina into the European Union,”: 93. 56
Zvornik, Yugoslavia got one step closer to a second continuous West-East-connection from Ljubljana via Croatian Karlovac and Bosanski Novi through all of Northern Bosnia to Serbian Stalać, called the “Southern Mainline”.254 With the completion of the route Tuzla–Zvornik, the BH part of that mainline was put fully in place. In the annual Yugoslav railway guidebook 1991/92, which was published already in spring 1991 and covered the period from June 1991 until May 1992, the schedule for this new link to Serbia is not yet included. Shortly after the release, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence255 and Yugoslavia dissolved in war, consequently a new guidebook was never printed. Even though parts of the last published schedule can be found online,256 I use Spring 1990 as a reference point in this chapter, for a very practical reason: it was possible to acquire the complete, printed railway guide 1989/90, while the online version of the 1991/1992 guidebook is incomplete and scanned without pagination. No major differences are to be expected between the schedules of those two guidebooks. The routes that I shall present below were mostly operated by three categories of trains: prioritised business trains (poslovni) offered the fastest and most comfortable connections between the economic centres of Yugoslavia, fast trains (brzi) also supplied smaller towns and were the most common class in intercity traffic, and passenger trains (putnički) offered regional connections and stopped at all stations.257 A considerable amount of long-distant traffic was operated by night trains, apparently the demand on certain routes (like the Una line) was high enough for two such connections per night.258 In the following register, the number of connections in one direction within 24 hours is analysed. For internal connections, I always indicate the travel time from bigger cities to smaller ones; for transregional connections, the travel time from BiH to other republics. In the other direction, the travel time may vary. A “reasonable connection” is defined as a train journey from the point of departure to the point of arrival with maximum one hour waiting time at connecting stations.
254 According to Mirko Dokić, the only missing sections were Glina-Bosanski Novi (HR/BiH) and Lipnica-Valjevo (SRB). See: Mirko Dokić, “Saobraćajno-Ekonomski Značaj Južne Železničke Magistrale Ljubljana-Karlovac-Glina- B.Novi-Doboj-Zvornik-Valjevo-Požega-Stalać,” Promet 2, 5-6 (1990): 325, 328. 255 Both republics declared independence on 25th of June 1991. See: Snežana Trifunovska, ed., Yugoslavia Through Documents: From Its Creation to Its Dissolution (Dordrecht, Bostin, London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1994), XIII–XIV. 256 See: Srećko Ignjatović, “Red Vožnje Jugoslovenskih Željeznica Iz 1991-92. Godine,”, http://vremeplov.ba/?p=5128 (accessed October 24, 2020). 257 See: Red Vožnje 1989/90: Valid 28.05.1989–26.05.1990 (Belgrade, 1989), 6. 258 See: ibid., 122–23. 57
Let us start with the biggest cities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo and Banja Luka: in Spring 1990 they were directly connected six times daily, with a travel time of 3 hours 35 minutes for the quickest and 4 hours 15 minutes for the slowest train.259 From Sarajevo to Bihać there was one direct train per day, additionally the schedule offered one more reasonable connection with a change in Bosanski Novi. The respective travel time amounted to 6 hours 31 minutes and 7 hours. The route Banja Luka–Bihać, linked twice a day directly and once with a change, could be covered in 2 hours 34 minutes to 3 hours 23 minutes.260 Sarajevo and Mostar, in turn, were the best-linked cities within BiH with nine daily trains; the travel time varied from 1 hours 46 minutes to 2 hours 22 minutes.261 Without the completion of the “Southern mainline”, the position of Tuzla was a peripheral one, hence the town was only accessed by regional trains. There were six connections a day from Doboj to Tuzla, with a respective travel time between 1 hour 27 minutes and 1 hour 32 minutes. One of those connections started in Sarajevo. Additionally, with changing in Doboj, there were two more reasonable connections that linked the capital to the North-East. Hence, passengers had three opportunities to travel from Sarajevo to Tuzla, for which they had to calculate with a travel time between 4 hours 24 minutes and 5 hours 2 minutes.262 The guidebook does not feature direct trains from Banja Luka to Tuzla, but, by changing in Doboj, there were two reasonable connections a day, with travel times of 3 hours 16 minutes and 3 hours 33 minutes.263 Let us move now to inter-republican connections: Zagreb could be reached from Sarajevo via Doboj and Bosanski Novi (border at Dobrljin) with five direct trains a day, the travel time differed between 6 hours 30 minutes and 8 hours 19 minutes. The route also passed through Banja Luka, from where the distance to the Croatian capital varied between 2 hours 53 minutes and 4 hours 31 minutes. With three additional trains Banja Luka–Zagreb that did not start from Sarajevo, the cities had eight connections per day.264
259 See: ibid., 120–21. 260 See: ibid. 261 See: ibid., 116–17. 262 See: ibid., 120. 263 See: ibid., 238-239, 277. 264 See: ibid., 120–21. 58
To the South, two of the five Zagreb–Sarajevo trains went further to Ploče/Kardeljevo,265 with a total travel time Zagreb–Kardeljevo of 10 hours 50 minutes. Including those connections, eight trains a day ran from Sarajevo to Kardeljevo (passing the border a Metković), with a travel time between 2 hours 40 minutes and 3 hours 30 minutes.266 Not just Zagreb was linked to the BH capital with five direct trains a day, Belgrade too. Three of these trains ran down to Southern Dalmatia as well. For the route Sarajevo-Belgrade (via Vinkovci and the border at Šamac), passengers needed between 5 hours 51 minutes and 7 hours 2 minutes, from Belgrade to Kardeljevo they had to calculate with a journey time between 9 hours 55 minutes and 11 hours 20 minutes.267 An approximate computation shows that the Tuzla–Zvornik link was only of regional importance for the Tuzla basin. It did not constitute an improvement for the connectivity between Sarajevo and Belgrade, as the old route via Šamac and Vinkovci (444.9 km) was still much shorter than the alternative route via Zvornik and Šabac (526.1 km).268 Even with the additional section Lipnica–Valjevo, that was never built but presented by Dokić as one of the two missing parts of the Southern mainline, the route Sarajevo–Zvornik–Belgrade would have still been longer (468.5 km) than the route Sarajevo-Šamac–Vinkovci–Belgrade.269 As mentioned above, before Tuzla became linked to Zvornik in 1992, the railway station of the BH border town was located on the Serbian side of the Drina river and accessible only from Serbia. Zvornik Grad–Ruma was run four times a day, with a travel time between 2 hours 35
265 From 1950 until 1954 and again in the 1980s, the name of the seaport Ploče (Aleksandrovo in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) was changed yet again into Kardeljevo, in honour of a communist politician. See: Aleš Gabrič, “Preimenovanja Krajevnih in Uličnih Imen V Letih 1945-1955,” Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino, 1-2 (1996): 113. 266 See: Red vožnje 1989/90, 118–19. 267 See: ibid., 116–17. 268 The respective route lengths are self-calculated with the following information: Sarajevo–Doboj: 172.4 km. See: Wikipedia, “Pruga Šamac – Sarajevo,”, https://bs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruga_%C5%A0amac_%E2%80%93_Sarajevo (accessed December 29, 2020). Doboj–Tuzla: 60 km. See:Srećko Ignjatović, “Šeme stanica normalnog kolosijeka pruge Doboj Novi – Tuzla, 1955. godine,”; Tuzla–Zvornik 45.3 km. See:Lazarević, “Prije 20 godina prošao je prvi voz saobraćajnicom Tuzla - Zvornik,”; Zvornik–Ruma: 73.5 km. See: Wikipedia, “Pruga Ruma—Zvornik,”, https://sr.wikipedia.org/sr- el/%D0%9F%D1%80%D1%83%D0%B3%D0%B0_%D0%A0%D1%83%D0%BC%D0%B0%E2%80%94%D0%97%D0% B2%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA (accessed December 29, 2020); Ruma–Beograd: 62.5 km. See: Wikipedia, “Željeznička pruga Zagreb—Beograd,”; Belgrad– Strizivojna Vrpolje: 187.8 km. See: Wikipedia, “Željeznička pruga Zagreb—Beograd,”; Strizivojna Vrpolje–Sarajevo: 257.1 km. See: Wikipedia, “Pruga Šamac – Sarajevo,”. The figure’s reliability is double-checked; they accord with the distances provided by Google Maps. 269 The route length is self-calculated with the following information: Zvornik–Lipnica: ca. 32.8 km. See: Google Maps, Lipnica–Zvornik (Walking Distance Alongside the Railway Track) (2020), https://cutt.ly/RjqYdW5 (accessed December 29, 2020); Lipnica–Valjevo: 67.8 km. See: Dokić, “Saobraćajno-ekonomski značaj južne železničke magistrale Ljubljana-Karlovac-Glina-B.Novi-Doboj-Zvornik-Valjevo-Požega-Stalać,”: 328; Valjevo–Beograd: 90.2 km. See: Kežić, Bauen für den Einheitsstaat, 327. 59
minutes and 2 hours 49 minutes. Reasonable connections to Belgrade were offered twice, the total travel time Zvornik-Belgrade was either 3 hours 57 minutes or 4 hours 29 minutes.270 Two more lines connected the Bosnian North-East with Croatia and Serbia respectively. From Tuzla (via the border at Brčko) to Croatian Vinkovci, five trains a day were offered, the travel time was between 2 hours 57 minutes and 3 hours 17 minutes.271 From Bijeljina to Serbian Šid, even nine regional trains ran every day (via the border at Rača), the journey took travellers between 55 minutes and 1 hour 28 minutes. With reasonable waiting time to change trains in Šid, the route Bijeljina-Belgrade could be covered three times a day in 2 hours 52 minutes to 3 hours 44 minutes.272 In another corner of the republic, the Una line constituted a major transport axis through the Bosnian North-West with its local centre Bihać. Each day the town had four connections to Zagreb (via the border at Dobrljin) and Split (via the border at Ličko Dugopolje), with a travel time of 2 hours 47 minutes to 3 hours 42 minutes to Zagreb and a travel time of 3 hours 59 minutes to 4 hours 45 minutes to Split. The whole route Zagreb–Split via Bihać took between 6 hours 56 minutes and 8 hours 29 minutes.273 In comparison, the alternative route from Zagreb to Split that ran entirely on Croatian territory (Lika line) offered five connections a day, but involved a longer journey: the travel time was between 7 hours 47 minutes and 9 hours 43 minutes.274 Moreover, also Belgrade was directly connected to the Dalmatian trade hubs via Bihać. Four trains per day linked the Yugoslav capital to Split, with a travel time between 11 hours 46 minutes and 12 hours 33 minutes. The route from Bihać to Belgrade, run five times daily, took between 6 hours 25 minutes and 8 hours 7 minutes.275 This register, as presented on the previous pages, shows that the urban agglomerations of the Socialist Republic of BiH were well-integrated in the wider Yugoslav space with a set of long- distant trains which ran several times a day. Even though there was no synchronised
270 See: Red vožnje 1989/90, 112. 271 See: ibid., 287. 272 See: ibid., 112. 273 See:ibid., 122–23. 274 See: ibid., 124–25. 275 See: ibid., 114–15. 60
(integrated) timetable,276 the connectivity alongside the main axes in the year 1990 was considerable. At the time of its greatest extension in 1965, the BH railway system was connected to its neighbouring regions via 13 or 14 railway border crossings. Seven remained after the discontinuation of the narrow-gauge routes, all of them still operating in the last peaceful years before the demise of socialist Yugoslavia. Five led to Croatia, two to Serbia and none to Montenegro. Beside this political disproportion, also their geographical location on the border line shows a stark imbalance. The highest connectivity with other republics existed in the Bosnian North-East, with four border crossings in relative vicinity to each other (Šamac and Brčko to Croatia, Rača and Zvornik to Serbia). However, neither the line via Rača to Bijeljina nor the line to Zvornik (until 1992) were linked to the rest of the Bosnian Herzegovinian railway system, making the first one rather an extension of the Serbian railway scheme and the latter one even an integral part of it, as the whole track and even the train station Zvornik Grad were located on the Serbian side of the border. Only in 1992 did the BH and the Serbian railway systems become directly linked again. Apart from the well-connected North-East, the North-West of BiH had two border crossings at its disposal (Dobrljin and Martin Brod), the South-West only one (Metković). The whole range of the Eastern and South-Eastern border was not traversable by railway at all. Within the republic, the best railway connectivity existed in the North, the only part of BiH where one can speak of a network of lines. Aside from that area, the railway system only consisted of one North-South connection. Eastern Bosnia, Central Western Bosnia and the Western and Eastern Herzegovina were left without any railway connections after the suspension of the narrow-gauge system. This is shown in the comparative view on track density, a key figure in railway development: the density of the BH railway scheme equalled 1.64 km/100 km², far behind the Yugoslav average of 2.67 km/100 km². For further comparison, the density in the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) amounted to 4.61 km/100 km², while France had achieved 6.40 km/100 km².277
276 A synchronised or integrated railway timetable is defined as a schedule “where all trains of a railway network operate in regular, periodically recurring intervals, in a given cycle time.” Ljevo, Entwurf eines Taktfahrplans für das Eisenbahnnetz in Bosnien und Herzegovina, 4. 277 See: Kulović, “Stanje i mogućnost uključivanja saobraćaja BiH u evropski saobraćajni sistem,”: 241. 61
The quality of the existing network was increasingly deteriorating: in 1980, 86% of the BH railway lines had been fit for a speed of more than 80 km/h, by 1989 this figure had declined to ca. 50% of lines.278 In the last years of socialist BiH, the consequences of this bad condition were an important issue in the discussion about the economic development of the republic, a member of the Bosnian Herzegovinian Secretariat for Transport worried especially about the negative effects on the “possibility for integration in the European traffic streams”.279 The economic and transport-wise integration into the European Community was a major topic of the time, as another contemporary scholarly article shows.280 However, as the road infrastructure of BiH had developed dynamically in the decades up to 1990,281 the disintegratory consequences of the closure of tracks were cushioned. By that time, the integrational role that the railway had played in the Bosnian Herzegovinian space had been mostly taken over by cars, busses and lorries.
278 See: ibid. 279 Ibid. 280 See: Damir Šimulčik, “Optimiranje Razvoja Prometne Infrastrukture U Jugoslaviji - Činitelj Prometne Integracije U EZ,” Promet 2, 5-6 (1990), http://traffic.fpz.hr/index.php/PROMTT/article/view/395/256 (accessed December 28, 2020). 281 In 1990, Mirsad Kulović cites 20,523 km of categorised road infrastructure in BiH, 17.6% of the Yugoslav network. Since the SR BiH took up roughly 20% of the SFRY’s territory (See: footnote 187), this came relatively close to a levelled distribution. The road density equalled 40.1 km/100 km². See: Kulović, “Stanje i mogućnost uključivanja saobraćaja BiH u evropski saobraćajni sistem,”: 241. 62
Map 4: The railway system of Yugoslavia in 1989/1990, cropped, with the borders of the SR BiH sketched in by myself.282
2.6. Summary
The history of the BH railway system begins with the shared plan of Austria-Hungary and the Sublime Porte to build an “Oriental railway” from Vienna to Constantinople through Ottoman Bosnia. Only a small standard-gauge section in the Bosnian North-West was completed in 1872, before the Danube Monarchy took over the administration of Bosnia as a result of the Great Eastern crisis. The Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina, lasting from 1878 until 1918, was marked by the construction of a widely ramified narrow-gauge railway network that served partially military purposes but was essentially used to export crude materials, mostly timber
282 Red vožnje 1989/90, inner part of the verso. 63
and coal, from BiH to the industrial hubs of the monarchy. Despite these achievements, the existing infrastructure was always perceived as inconvenient; scholars agree that it drastically slowed down the economic development of the region. Several large-scale plans to increase the province’s connectivity were never realised, mostly because of budgetary constraints but also because the Austrian and the Hungarian part of the monarchy, who shared the administration of BiH, could not agree on the most important projects. The choice to build the railway tracks in – cheaper and quicker to implement – narrow gauge instead of standard gauge was compelled by the economic situation of the time, yet it negatively influenced the connectivity of the region for decades and the implications can be traced up until the present day. In the interwar Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 1918–1941, the narrow-gauge network was extended especially in the Eastern parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina and lines to today’s Serbia and Montenegro were built. North-Western Bosnian Bihać received a standard-gauge link to Banja Luka and Zagreb, but in total the building activity fell short and the most urgent infrastructural projects, high-capacity railway routes from the Northern parts of Yugoslavia through Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Dalmatian coast, could not be realised due to the financial situation of the state. In the years following the Second World War, the socialist leadership managed to build some badly-needed normal-gauge routes, most importantly the lines from Sarajevo and the industrial region around Tuzla to the mainline Zagreb–Belgrade and from Banja Luka to Doboj. After the normalisation of the route from Sarajevo to the seaport Ploče, the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina reached the widest extension of its railway network in 1965. After that time, a constant debt crisis and several reforms of the Yugoslav economic system to the detriment of the BH investment power rendered the building of new lines in BiH impossible. Due to the increasing competitiveness of road traffic and the railway companies’ focus on profitable mainlines, all Bosnian Herzegovinian narrow-gauge routes were suspended in the period between 1966 and 1978. In 1965, 13 or 14 railway border crossings from BiH to Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro were in use; after the suspension of the narrow-gauge system, seven were left. The Yugoslav railway guide of 1989/1990 shows direct connections from Sarajevo to Banja Luka, Bihać, Mostar, Tuzla, Zagreb, Belgrade and Ploče/Kardeljevo and from Bihać to Belgrade, Zagreb and Split. When war hit BiH for a third time in the century in 1992, a last railway construction project –
64
the link Tuzla–Zvornik – was just completed, 120 years after the first rail was laid on Bosnian soil. In the last socialist decades, achievements were made in the electrification of lines and modernisation of the rolling stock. Yet, the outdated rail infrastructure led to a diminution of the possible top speed in the course of the 1980s, and subsequently to the inability of the network to compete with road traffic, which was heavily invested in during this period. Summarising the development of transport directions and integration of spaces, the following may be noted: the railway orientation northwards that had been laid during the Austro- Hungarian period proved to be persistent in the moyenne durée of railway development, complemented by the ancient orientation towards the Dalmatian seaside and an orientation towards Belgrade that remained relatively weak, given that the city served as the Yugoslav capital for 70 years. Furthermore, sources from 1990 show a desire for deeper integration of the BH space and the broader Yugoslav space as a whole into the European Community to its North.
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3. Reconstruction and neglect – The loss of importance of the Bosnian Herzegovinian railway since 1996
In December 1995, the signing of the Dayton Agreement by the Republic of Croatia, the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia ended three and a half years of war on Bosnian Herzegovinian soil and established the complex state structure that is in place up until today. Since then, independent Bosnia and Herzegovina comprises two entities with “strong political autonomies”:283 the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) as an association of ten Cantons on the one hand, mostly inhabited by ethnic Bosniaks and Croats; and the centralistic Republika Srpska (RS) on the other, mostly inhabited by ethnic Serbs.284 Additionally, there is the small unaffiliated Brčko District. While the Bosniaks who dominate in the Federation traditionally urge the whole state’s unity and integrity, the political leaders of the RS – supported by a majority of its electorate – try to keep their entity as self- dependent and segregated as (economically) possible.285 This also shows in the respective transport policies and their accompanying rhetoric. The Dayton constitution is acknowledged for having ended a complex war, yet many scholars agree that the effects of its institutionalisation are “disintegrative and destructive”.286 The weak role that it ascribes to the state – a minimal compromise between the three ethnic factions – cemented the “territorialisation”287 of the Bosnian Herzegovinian space. Though the war-time development is omitted in my thesis, the following paragraph offers some considerations about the spatial development in that period, serving for the better understanding of the geopolitical situation in Daytonian, post-1995 Bosnia and Herzegovina. Wars not only cause the most severe disruption of political, economic and societal orders, they always bring about a dramatic loss of connectivity between the belligerent people and spaces as well. In the case of civil war, a seemingly well-integrated space gets fragmented and torn apart, arduously traversable borders arise both on geographical and mental maps, re-
283 Ibrahimagić, Državno-pravni razvitak Bosne i Hercegovine, 59. 284 See: Florian Bieber, Post-War Bosnia: Ethnicity, Inequality and Public Sector Governance (Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 122. 285 See: Vedran Dzihic, “Comments on Gerard Toal's '"Republika Srpska Will Have a Referendum': The Rhetorical Politics of Milorad Dodik",” Nationalities Papers 41, no. 1 (2013): 205–6. 286 Slavo Kukić, “Daytonski Ustav I Integracija Bosne I Hercegovine,” Dijalog - Casopis za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju, no. 1 (1998): 153. 287 Mate Subašić, “Bosna I Hercegovina Ili Federacija BiH I Republika Srpska – Analiza Mogucnosti Implementacije Konsocijacijskog I Integrativnog Pristupa,” Politička misao 52, no. 2 (2015): 67. 66
establishing old or creating completely new spaces. In the case of the republican (mostly Bosniak) faction in Bosnia and Herzegovina, all neighbouring republics within the SFRY turned into hostile lands by 1993,288 resulting in an extensive loss of connectivity.289 The territory held by the Croat and the Serbian factions in BiH, on the other hand, lost the former connectivity within the republic, but maintained and strengthened connectivity with Croatia and Serbia, respectively. After the war, the Republika Srpska – constituting two parts which are geographically separated by the small, unaffiliated Brčko District – oriented itself economically and politically towards the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) to its east. This was complicated by the fact that only one half of the RS territory had direct borders with the FRY.290 The Federation of BiH, on the other hand, was internally fragmented and externally encapsulated, especially the spaces dominated by Bosniaks. Yet the FBiH had to seek reconnection with Croatia to resume a basic economic life, an endeavour that was probably facilitated by the ties between the Croatians on both sides of the border line.291 The extent of internal spatial disruption is illustrated by the omnipresence of political boundaries in Bosnia and Herzegovina: the total length of the state border (1,537 km) is by far exceeded by the length of the winding entity border (2,177 km).292 To overcome the ethnical segregation, the draughtspeople of the Dayton constitution had envisaged transport to be a key binder of the entities, as the political scientist Brad Blitz points out in an article from 2001.
288 In that year, the Croat-Bosniak coalition against the Yugoslav People’s Army and the Army of the Republika Srpska ultimately fell apart. Now, not only the remains of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), but also Croatia became an adversary to the proclaimed Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. See: Željko Ivanković and Dunja Melčić, “Der Bosniakisch-Kroatische "Krieg Im Kriege",” in Der Jugoslawien-Krieg: Handbuch zu Vorgeschichte, Verlauf und Konsequenzen, ed. Dunja Melčić, 423–45 (Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1999), 436. 289 However, vivid smuggling activities between all three factions that were maintained in all phases of the war show that the loss of connectivity was not absolute. See: Peter Andreas, “The Clandestine Political Economy of War and Peace in Bosnia,” International Studies Quarterly 48, no. 1 (2004): 40–1, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3693562.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Aac621c9f780cec59e3d6eb75dcc86e40 (accessed December 31, 2020). 290 See: Mark Almond, “Dayton Und Die Neugestaltung Bosnien-Herzegowinas,” in Der Jugoslawien- Krieg: Handbuch zu Vorgeschichte, Verlauf und Konsequenzen, ed. Dunja Melčić, 446–54 (Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1999), 451 291 See: Herbert Büschenfeld, “Die wirtschaftliche Lage der Nachfolgestaaten Jugoslawiens vor dem Kosovokrieg,” in Der Jugoslawien-Krieg, 520–21. 292 See: Marić, “Corridor Vc as a factor of integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina into the European Union,”: 91. 67
“The manner in which Bosnia will be reconstructed is largely tied to the market. […] The most far-reaching reforms that bind the entities at the state level concern commerce, inter-entity trade, transportation, and the movement of populations.”293
It is worth pausing for a moment on the term “reconstruction” that Blitz employs in this quote. Serving as a key concept in this chapter of my work, it has a wide array of meanings in post- war studies, exemplified by Denisa Kostovicova and Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic with the citation of “two extremes.”294 On the one hand, there is a mere technical/physical approach to the word. Amitai Etzioni defines “reconstruction as a time-constrained process aimed at `the restoration of the condition of the assets and infrastructure . . . to the same or similar state in which they were found before the outbreak of hostilities.ˊ”295 On the other hand, there is a much more comprehensive, human-centred approach, represented by “the authors of liberal peace provenance[. They] understand reconstruction as a wholesale societal transformation to prevent relapse to armed conflict.”296 Although I focus on the reconstruction of physical connectivity in the railway scheme in this work, it is important to acknowledge how the lack of societal reconciliation also impedes the rehabilitation of transport infrastructure. The assessment that reconstruction in BiH “has been limited to reconstructing ethnically defined nations at the expense of that of the Bosnians as a multiethnic nation”297 goes in line with the words of Miodrag Živanović, professor at the Faculty of Humanities in Banja Luka, who says that in such a state “communication with [the Other] is not only unnecessary, but also undesirable.”298 Although the disjunctive spatial consequences of this entrenched situation are obvious, it is hard to evaluate to which extent the fragmentation of the BH societies influenced the development of the railway system in the last 25 years, since the available sources do not allow for a focus on this question.
293 Blitz, “Political integration and economic reconstruction in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Three paths to recovery considered,”: 218. 294 Denisa Kostovicova and Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic, “Ethnicity Pays: The Political Economy of Postconflict Nationalism in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” in After Civil War, 189. 295 Amitai Etzioni, “Reconstruction: An Agenda,” Journal of Intervention and State Building 1, no. 1 (2007): 27. Cited after Denisa Kostovicova and Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic, “Ethnicity Pays: The Political Economy of Postconflict Nationalism in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” in After Civil War, 189. 296 Denisa Kostovicova and Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic, “Ethnicity Pays: The Political Economy of Postconflict Nationalism in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” in After Civil War: Division, Reconstruction, and Reconciliation in Contemporary Europe, ed. Bill Kissane, 187–212, National and Ethnic Conflict in the 21st Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 189. 297 Ibid., 188. 298 Miodrag Živanović, E-Mail to Florian Supe, December 7, 2020. 68
Instead, I shall adopt a more positivist approach in the description of Bosnian Herzegovinian railway connectivity since 1996. The core work in this chapter is a detailed line-up of revived and suspended railway routes with an emphasis on passenger connections,299 based on which conclusions about the reintegration of transport spaces are drawn. The development is scrutinised with regard to the spatial point of departure and the complex organisational structure of the BH post-war railway sector and analysed against the background of the railway’s entrapment in societal insignificance. The wider geo-economic dimension, corruption, international investment and the development of road infrastructure are also taken into consideration. In the first section, the organisational scheme and the most relevant stakeholders that determine the railway connections of BiH are presented. Thereafter, I examine the periods of increase and decrease of connectivity both within the state and to neighbouring Croatia and Serbia and compare the present (pre- COVID-19) scheme of railway links to the status in 1990. In the development of the past two and a half decades, I distinguish two phases, namely a first period shaped by immediate post-war reconstruction and a longer, more ambiguous second period, with the year 2002 as dividing point. While that second phase was informed by stagnation initially, recent years have shown a more vivid fluctuation. However, since there is no clear line of development – some measures indicate a revival of the railway, others further abandonment – and the temporal vicinity does not allow for a reliable evaluation of the measure’s sustainability, I abstain from establishing a separate third period in this chapter. The history of revival and abandonment is terminated with an overview of passenger connections in 2019 and their subsequent comparison with the scheme in 1990 as compiled in Chapter 2. On the basis of this comparison, conclusions on the changes in connectivity can be drawn. The analysis of those two phases, conducted in chapters 3.2 and 3.3, is followed by the last section, an examination of political, economic and societal frame conditions that have shaped the fate of the railway in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1996 and lead to its low utilisation in comparison to late socialist BiH.
299 Local connections are excluded from the analysis. 69
3.1. Organisation of the railway system in BiH with a stakeholder analysis
When the peace agreement was signed in Dayton in late 1995, three railway companies operated in BiH, all of them founded in war-time on behalf of the administrative structures established by the three fighting parties: the Railways of the Republika Srpska (ŽRS) in the Serb-controlled regions, the Railways of Herceg-Bosna in the Croatian-controlled regions and the Railways of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the regions controlled by the (Bosniak) Republic of BiH. Even though the Dayton Constitution dismissed the idea of Herceg-Bosna as a third entity in the new state, its railway company existed further until it was merged with the Railways of BiH in 2001 to form the Railways of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ŽFBiH). Before the merger, in the especially ethnically fragmented Herzegovina, competence for the rail infrastructure could change from track section to track section between the Bosniak and the Croat company, as a newspaper feature points out.300 Traffic lies in the responsibility of the two entities, who maintain separate Ministries of Transport and Communications301 and, unchanged since 2001, two separate railway companies. However, since “regulation of inter-entity transportation” is a state-level competence,302 an additional Ministry of Communications and Transport at the state level exists to fulfil this task.303 Furthermore, in the Dayton Agreement, the parties obliged themselves to establish a “Transportation Corporation” to “organize and operate” the railway and other transport facilities304 that had been severely damaged in the war.305 In accordance with this proposition,
300 See: Jean-Arnault Dérens, “Es Geht Kein Zug Nach Ploce,” Le Monde diplomatique, November 15, 2002, 4, https://www.wiso-net.de/document/TAZ__297e23cf1eb653983d4ae16f0cd86f656f29e4bf (accessed October 28, 2020). 301 Federal Ministry of Transport and Communications: http://fbihvlada.gov.ba/english/ministarstva/promet_komunikacije.php Ministry of Transport and Communications or the Republika Srpska: https://vladars.net/eng/vlada/ministries/MTC/Pages/default.aspx 302 The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Dayton Agreement (1995), https://www.osce.org/bih/126173 (accessed October 28, 2020), Art.III/9. 303 Ministry of Communications and Transport of Bosnia and Herzegovina: http://www.mkt.gov.ba/home/language 304 The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Annex 9, Art.II/21. 305 See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, “O Nama.: Historija,”, https://www.zfbh.ba/o-nama/historija/ (accessed October 29, 2020). 70
the FBiH and the RS created the Bosnia and Herzegovina Railways Public Corporation (BHŽJK) as an umbrella organisation of the two companies.306 Its “purpose is to establish an institutionalised cooperation between the Entities and to facilitate decision-making so that a smooth, safe and regular inter-Entity and international rail traffic takes place.”307 In detail the BHŽJK is responsible for the following tasks, as presented on its website:
"- The allocation of train paths for inter-entity and international traffic, in a non-discriminatory manner - The harmonization of signaling [sic], safety, telecommunications and other systems on the railway network of the two Entities - The setting of accounts between railway companies - Allocation and managing [of] donations that are donated or borrowed"308
Next to these three organisations which operate the BH railway system – the companies of the entities (ŽFBH and ŽRS) and the common BHŽJK – we can identify several key stakeholders. For those “strategically important […] external groups”309 I abide by the definition of Freeman and Reed: stakeholders in the broad sense “can affect the achievement of an organization’s objectives or [are] affected by the achievement of an organization’s objectives.”310 The most important stakeholders, naturally, are the state and the two entities, who are in possession of their railway companies. While the Sarajevo–based ŽFBiH, however, has the legal form of a limited liability society and is controlled by the Federation to 91.8% (data from 2015),311 the ŽRS, with its main office in Doboj, is a public limited company and, as of 2020, only to 68.9% in possession of the Republika Srpska.312 Further key stakeholders are the three
306 See: Bosnia and Herzegovina Railways Public Corporation, “About Us,”, http://www.bhzjk.ba/ENG/about.html (accessed October 28, 2020). 307 Ibid. 308 Ibid. 309 See: R. E. Freeman and David L. Reed, “Stockholders and Stakeholders: A New Perspectiveon Corporate Governance,” California Management Review 25, no. 3 (1983): 91, http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=539e446f-83f5-4952-babd- 7d781c04e5dd%40sessionmgr4008 (accessed October 29, 2020). 310 See: ibid. 311 A newer source was not published. See: Ured za reviziju institucija u FBiH Sarajevo, “Izvještaj O Finansijskoj Reviziji: J.P. "Željeznice FBiH" D.O.O. Sarajevo,”, http://www.vrifbih.ba/javni-izvj/j- pred/default.aspx?id=7587&langTag=bs-BA (accessed October 29, 2020), 10. 312 See: Zapisnik Sa 35. Redovne Godišnje Sjednice Skupštine Akcionara Željeznica RS A.D. Doboj (2020), https://www.zrs-rs.com/kompanija/skupstina-akcionara (accessed October 29, 2020), 1. 71
ministries of transport (one at state level and one for each entity) with their initiative and control functions in the development and maintanence of the railway systems. Moreover, since one of the objectives of the BH railway sector is to conduct international traffic, we can additionally identify the States of Croatia and Serbia313 with their respective transport ministries and railway companies as key stakeholders for our analysis. Additionally, the World Bank and the European Union play a role as the most important investors and, in the case of the EU, also as a powerful normative force in the transport infrastructure of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
3.2. Immediate remedy and hesitant further reconnection (1996–2002)
In the three and a half years of armed conflict on BH soil, “[m]ost railway lines were rendered inoperable”.314 In December 1995, on the territory of war-ridden BiH, only a small number of lines were in service. There is evidence about the routes Banja Luka–Doboj and Banja Luka– Bosanski Novi/Novi Grad,315 run by the Railways of the Republika Srpska with five and four connections per direction a day, respectively.316 Additionally, a local news platform mentions that refugees were brought by train from Bijeljina in the North-East of the de-facto already existent Republika Srpska to Serbia in summer 1995, which proves that the – now international –Bijeljina–Šid railway track continued its service in wartime. The article also states that the line was still in use in the post-war period.317 No information, on the other hand, can be found on the question as to whether passenger trains operated in the Federation of BiH in the immediate aftermath of the war; if they did, this could have been the case only on short sections. The economy of the pacified new country lay in ruins, factories were either destroyed or plundered. With 1998 as a reference point, Herbert Büschenfeld writes that the output in the
313 In principal, this would also apply to Montenegro, but since no attempt was made in the post-war period to reconnect the BH and the Montenegrin railway systems so far, the state is omitted in the list of stakeholders. 314 John E. Thompson, Eddy DeClerq and Katsuhide Nagayama, “International Intermodality Aspects of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Transport Master Plan,” Institute of Transportation Engineers Journal 72, no. 8 (2002): 24, https://search.proquest.com/openview/0de136ccb40c6d6cff7a3c733bb29a28/1/advanced (accessed November 20, 2020). 315 Like from other toponyms, the Republika Srpska eliminated the attribute “Bosanski“ from Bosanski Novi, which is now called Novi Grad, to avoid lingual affiliation with the unliked state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. 316 See: Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., E-Mail to Florian Supe, November 20, 2020. 317 See: noviglas.info, “Semberija – Kada Je Pisak Lokomotive Odjekivao Semberskom Ravnicom,”, May 19, 2019, https://noviglas.info/2019/05/19/semberija-kada-je-pisak-lokomotive-odjekivao-semberskom-ravnicom- foto/ (accessed January 14, 2021). 72
industrial and mining sectors – from which more than half of BiH’s added value had been derived in the last year before the conflict – was still diminished to one tenth of its pre-war- level.318 Therefore, not many goods could have been transported by rail, even if more routes would have been operational. Yet, once the basic supply for the Bosnian Herzegovinian population was secured, the devastated transport system became a focal point in international reconstruction funding, as its disabled state was a key inhibiting factor for the aspired economic recovery. The international reconstruction programme for BiH for the years 1996–1999 allocated 13.7% of financial ressources to transport reconstruction. With 17.6% for energy supply and an additional 23.5% for other infrastructural measures, nearly 55% of the total sum was designated for infrastructural rehabilitation.319 A media report mentions that only in 1997 both entities started to benefit from foreign aid in the transport sector; in the first year of the programme, the Republika Srpska was still denied assistance for political reasons.320 The first major success in the railway sector was achieved in July 1996, when the economic lifeline from Sarajevo via Mostar to the Croatian port Ploče could go provisionally back into service.321 With this route, cross-border railway freight haulage between Croatia and BiH became reestablished already half a year after the end of the war. More precisely, however, the reconnection pertained only to cross-border traffic between Croatia and the Federation of BiH, on the territory of which the BH side of the line was entirely located. It is remarkable that a first step towards spatial reintegration was possible across a national border before it was feasible between the two BH entities. Yet, this did not equal the achievement of pre-war “normalcy” on that line. According to Dérens’ report from 2002, the track around Mostar remained split for years, with several short sections operated consecutively by the Railways of Herceg-Bosna and the Railways of BiH.322 Moreover, the usage could only be conducted with diesel locomotives and (further) reduced speed, as the electrification of most BH railway lines had been destroyed.323
318 See: Herbert Büschenfeld, “Die wirtschaftliche Lage der Nachfolgestaaten Jugoslawiens vor dem Kosovokrieg,” in Der Jugoslawien-Krieg, 517. 319 See: ibid., 520. 320 See: Deutsche Verkehrs-zeitung, “Verkehrsprojekte in Bosnien Und Herzegowina Auf Hilfe Aus Dem Ausland Angewiesen,”, February 6, 1997, https://www.wiso- net.de/document/DVZ__6137b751630911b8695102b176f3a44a638fc22f (accessed October 29, 2020). 321 See: ibid. 322 See: Dérens, “Es geht kein Zug nach Ploce,”, 4. 323 See: Herbert Büschenfeld, “Die wirtschaftliche Lage der Nachfolgestaaten Jugoslawiens vor dem Kosovokrieg,” in Der Jugoslawien-Krieg, 520. 73
By mid-1998, “visible progress”324 had been made in the reconstruction of most sectors of the Bosnian Herzegovinian infrastructure. Regarding the traffic system, however, Büschenfeld records disparities between the different transport modes: while the rehabilitation of the higher-ranking road network proceeded “relatively satisfyingly”325, with one third of main and regional roads still waiting to be reconditioned, only 30% of the rail network was fit for operation. It could be used only provisionally “on small sections.”326 The available sources indicate that those sections were Banja Luka–Doboj and Banja Luka–Novi Grad in the Republika Srpska and Metković–Sarajevo in the FBiH. No information can be found about the section from Sarajevo further northwards to the entity border. Büschenfeld writes that the branch of the mainline which runs through the Bosna valley to Šamac was not operational, but it is unclear if this applies to all parts of the route.327 The Sarajevo–Ploče branch through the Neretva valley, on the other hand, gained even more importance when Croatia allowed the usage of the port and all the affiliated infrastructure to the Federation of BiH in autumn 1998.328 This information in Büschenfeld’s report offers other evidence that the Croatian counterpart for spatial reintegration was initially not the state Bosnia and Herzegovina, but only one of its entities. Additionally it suggests that BH exports via Ploče were not permitted in the years before or at least rwere estricted in a way not further elucidated. It may be assumed that the opening of Ploče to the Federation was not an act of goodwill towards Sarajevo or mere aid for the Bosnian Croats in Herzegovina and Central Bosnia, but rather based on rational economic thinking. Since Ploče, the second largest Croatian seaport (2005),329 has no direct connection to the Croatian railway network,330 BiH is its natural economic hinterland, badly needed for the port town to prosper. Subsequently, the ancient symbiosis between Bosnia and Herzegovina on the one hand and Dalmatia on the other linked the two spaces again in the third year after the war. Economic needs, however, do not suit as
324 Ibid. 325 Ibid. 326 Ibid., 518. 327 See: ibid., 520. 328 See: ibid., 521. 329 See: Stipetić, Bagić and Starčević, “Influence of Railway on the Development of the Port of Ploče,”: 423. 330 See: ibid., 428. 74
the only explanation for revived connectivity, since Srećko Ignjatović states that also passenger trains started to communicate between Sarajevo and Ploče in 1998.331 In the same year, the Republika Srpska began to reconnect with its neighbouring spaces as well. In April 1998, two railway border crossings between BiH and Croatia (Dobrljin and Brčko) were brought back into service.332 Apparently, they were used only for freight transport and the military supply of the SFOR mission in the beginning,333 since no international passenger trains ran on the routes according to the table that the ŽRS compiled for this thesis by request.334 Two months later, the first railway connection between the Federation of BiH and the Republika Srpska was reestablished. As both the North-South and the West-East mainline of the Bosnian Herzegovinian railway cross ran through the territory of both entities, a certain degree of cooperation was necessary for any long-distance transport. According to information by the ŽRS, one passenger train per day linked the entities’ centres Sarajevo and Banja Luka from June 1998 onwards.335 Apparently, Büschenfeld’s assessment that no trains communicated through the Bosna valley was made before that month, even though he cites mid-1998 as a reference point.336 In October 1999, the connection was extended from Banja Luka further to Bihać, trains thus crossed the entity borders between the Federation and the Republika Srpska twice. Earlier in the same year, a fourth international railway border had been reopened for freight transport. After the provisional rehabilitation of the track from Živince (near Tuzla) to Zvornik, much needed coal transports from the Tuzla basin to Serbia were possible.337 As shown above, in the first years of peace, the stakeholders in the BH traffic system were focused on restoring internal and immediate cross-border connectivity to resume a basic economic – and to a lesser degree societal – life. Yet, the respective plans also comprised a European dimension that had been initiated already in wartime. The integration of the
331 See: Srećko Ignjatović, “Istorija Razvoja Putničkog Saobraćaja Uzanog Kolosijeka U BiH,”, http://vremeplov.ba/?p=17404 (accessed January 12, 2021). 332 See: Christian Peschl, “The Train of a New Millennium - Ein Historisches Ereignis,” Schweizer Eisenbahn-Revue, 8-9 (2003): 363. 333 The NATO-led international peacekeeping mission for Bosnia and Herzegovina SFOR (Stabilisation Force) deployed its munitions with the help of the Austrian Federal Railways ÖBB on rail to BiH. See: ibid. 334 See: Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., E-Mail to Florian Supe. 335 See: ibid. 336 See: Herbert Büschenfeld, “Die wirtschaftliche Lage der Nachfolgestaaten Jugoslawiens vor dem Kosovokrieg,” in Der Jugoslawien-Krieg, 520. 337 See: Marijan Jozinović, E-Mail to Florian Supe, February 8, 2021. 75
Bosnian Herzegovinian transport development in supra-regional traffic planning was shaped by the designation of a Pan-European transport corridor (PETC) through its territory in 1997.338 Nine of those corridors were devised at the second European Conference of Ministers of Transport (ECMT) in 1994 in Crete339 as a reaction to the geopolitical shifts after the breakdown of the Eastern Bloc. The corridors should become intermodal lifelines of transport to create strong links between Eastern and Central Europe. At the third ECMT conference in Helsinki in 1997, a tenth corridor was added to achieve better connectivity of the ex-Yugoslav republics of Slovenia, Croatia and FRY after the end of war in those countries.340 The system is also referred to as the “Helsinki corridors”. Additionally, the corridor with the Roman Numeral V – running from Western Ukraine through Central Eastern Europe to the Upper Adriatic – received a new branch at the Helsinki conference, which connects BiH to the system and crosses its territory on a length of 336 km.341 Branch Va ends in Bratislava and does not reach the sea. Branch Vb is split in two sub- branches in Hungary, one leading via Zagreb to Rijeka and the other one via Ljubljana to Venice. Branch Vc, eventually, runs through Osijek in Eastern Slavonia and follows the Bosna and Neretva valleys to the Dalmatian coast, representing the railway mainline Brod–Sarajevo– Ploče.342 It is noteworthy that the central convergence of the branches b and c in Budapest (where corridor V also intersects with the corridors IV, VII (Danube) and X) evoked negative
338 See: Marić, “Corridor Vc as a factor of integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina into the European Union,”: 94. 339 The ECMT was an intergovernmental organisation founded in 1953 that was “loosely associated” with the OECD. In 2007, it was transformed into the geographically unrestricted International Transport Forum to allow the accession of non-European states. It works as a „forum […] to decide on politically non-binding regulations. (Christian Heinrich-Franke, “Mobility and European Integration: Politicians, Professionals and the Foundation of the ECMT,” Journal of Transport History 29, no. 1 (2008): 64–5, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.7227/TJTH.29.1.6?casa_token=c0EP5GmgMM0AAAAA:lvq6RzZy7pYy mdRCNISiGrlUydCE0rDSGKTHmO7rEq4c7OwvE5leeC2Ap0yUp1N3X2rIW2OImSk_6A (accessed February 1, 2021). See: OECD, “Development of ECMT Declaration,”, https://www.itf- oecd.org/sites/default/files/docs/dublin-declaration-en.pdf (accessed February 2, 2021), 1) Bosnia and Herzegovina joined the ECMT already in 1993 (See: International Transport Forum, “History of ITF,”, https://www.itf-oecd.org/history-itf (accessed February 2, 2021)), but it is unlikely that it participated in the Crete conference in 1994, since the mere survival of its state-structures was heavily challenged in that year of war. The non-participation of BiH, however, cannot be proven, since the Crete Declaration is not publicly accessible. 340 See: Ion Stancu, Mihai Varzaru and Adriana Lazarescu, “Helsinki Corridors: Ways of European Expansion and Development,” European Research Studies Journal 17, no. 2 (2014): 83, https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/bitstream/123456789/30701/1/ERSJ%2c_17%282%29_-_A6.pdf (accessed January 5, 2021). 341 See: Marić, “Corridor Vc as a factor of integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina into the European Union,”: 94. 342 See: Pan-European Corridor V (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, 2007), https://web.archive.org/web/20070626231438/http://www.unece.org/trans/main/ter/Countries/Corridors/co rr5.jpg (accessed January 4, 2021). 76
memories of the Austro-Hungarian imperialism that had exploited the region a century before.343 In this case, the traffic orientation and the economic ties that had been established in a completely different geopolitical context proved to be very persistent. Đuro Marić points out the importance of the corridor Vc for BiH, since four of the six biggest agglomerations of the country are located on its route (from North to South: Doboj, Zenica, Sarajevo, Mostar).344 The influential zone of the corridor, which the scholar defines as the space within a 30 km vicinity, comprises less than 20% of Bosnian Herzegovinian territory, but is the residential area of approximately 50% of its population and earns almost 60% of the state GDP (in 2012).345 However, Marić also asserts that corridor Vc cannot be the sole basis of BH transport development, as a “significant concentration of population and economic activities”346 lies outside of its impact zone. Most decisively, it does not comprise the link between the state’s two biggest centres, Sarajevo and Banja Luka.347
Map 5: Pan-European transport corridors in South-Eastern Europe348
343 See: Marić, “Corridor Vc as a factor of integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina into the European Union,”: 99. 344 The two big agglomerations which are not located on corridor Vc are Banja Luka and Tuzla. See: ibid., 95–96. 345 See: ibid., 96. 346 Ibid., 100. 347 See: ibid. 348 Evaluation of the Croatian Transport System (Figure 3) (Steiner, Sanja, 2008), https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Pan-European-corridors-in-Croatia_fig2_229004717/actions#reference (accessed January 5, 2021). 77
A main principle of the Pan-European corridors is intermodality between road, rail, water and air transport. For Vc that means a “parallel provision of [the] road and railway network”349 that also connects to the navigable river Sava at the Northern border of Bosnia and Herzegovina. While there is evidence for the prioritisation of road infrastructure on the route in the years after the war – ”the most important projects of reconstruction and modernization of [the] road infrastructure network are the construction of highway section[s] on the Corridor Vc”350 – this prioritisation is not visible in the rehabilitation of rail tracks. By 1999, most of the railway route on the BH part of Vc could be operated provisionally (from Metković in the South via Sarajevo to the railway junction Doboj), but there is no information on trains communicating in the Northern section from Doboj to the border crossing at Šamac, which was reopened only in 2002.351 That means that in 1999, freight trains could use already five of the seven border crossings that had existed before the Bosnian War: Metković, Dobrljin and Brčko to Croatia; Zvornik and Šid (which had apparently not been closed in the war) to Serbia. The border crossing at Šamac as a pivotal point of the Pan-European Corridor Vc was not yet among the open passages, international passenger trains communicated only via Metković to Ploče and via Rača to Šid. In March 2000, the first post-war loss of railway connectivity occurred, when the inter-entity passenger link Banja Luka–Bihać, an extension of the Sarajevo–Banja Luka route, was suspended for unknown reasons only five months after its establishment.352 This backlash, however, was exceptional. Generally speaking, after the first phase of railway rehabilitation that had been mostly conducted as immediate economic remedy,353 the years until 2002 brought great further advancements in passenger connectivity. On the route Sarajevo–Banja Luka, the most important railway link between the FBiH and the RS, passenger trains remained constantly in operation from June 1998 up until the end of the analysed period (2020), although their daily number fluctuated and travellers had to change in Doboj for certain connections until 2017.354
349 Marić, “Corridor Vc as a factor of integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina into the European Union,”: 96. 350 Ibid., 93. 351 See: Elmar Oberegger, “Bosnisch-Herzegowinische Eisenbahnen,”. 352 See: Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., E-Mail to Florian Supe. 353 This can be deduced by the fact that the opening of railway borders in 1996 and 1998 did not initially entail the communication of passenger trains. 354 See: Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., E-Mail to Florian Supe; See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, Red Vožnje: 13.12.2015.-10.12.2016. (Sarajevo, 2015). 78
A different inter-entity line, Doboj–Tuzla, went back into service in June 2000 with one passenger train a day. After a closure in 2003, possibly due to renovation, the link was re- established in 2004 with two daily trains per direction.355 In the Federation and the unaffiliated Brčko District, yet another local communication was brought back into operation in 2002 – the link Tuzla–Brčko.356 Since the railway station of Brčko is in possession of the ŽRS according to Srećko Ignjatović357 and the railway route in the unaffiliated district is jointly administered by both railway companies,358 this route can be also counted as an inter-entity line, as it required cooperation between the ŽFBiH and the ŽRS. Moreover, the turn of the millennium brought about remarkable achievements concerning international traffic. In June 2000, a daily passenger train Sarajevo–Banja Luka–Zagreb started to operate via Dobrljin, reinstalling the second cross-border passenger connection from Bosnia and Herzegovina after the trains to Ploče in the South. For 2001, Srećko Ignjatović mentions the introduction of an international train on the axis Sarajevo–Budapest, requiring cooperation between BiH, Croatia and Hungary.359 Since Oberegger notes the opening of the border at Šamac – the logical one for that link – only for 2002,360 one of the two cited years is probably incorrect. Notwithstanding this inaccuracy, the direct passenger connection between the BH and the Hungarian capital proves the will to bring the Vc Helsinki corridor into life and to implement its promise of enhanced spatial integration. This link was even a development in Bosnian Herzegovinian long-distance railway traffic in comparison to 1990, since no direct passenger link between Sarajevo and Budapest had existed at that time.361 Also, the list of railway connections that passed through the Republika Srpska predicates that the Zagreb–Sarajevo line was extended to Ploče in December 2002, possibly substituting the preexisting international train from BiH to the Croatian port. From then on, this international fast train crossed the BH-Croatian border twice and linked Southern Dalmatia via Sarajevo directly to the Croatian capital. With the same timetable change, the railway system of Bosnia
355 See: Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., E-Mail to Florian Supe. 356 See: Fena, “Željeznice FBiH Ukidaju Liniju Tuzla - Brčko,” klix.ba, November 30, 2012, https://www.klix.ba/vijesti/bih/zeljeznice-fbih-ukidaju-liniju-tuzla-brcko/121130126 (accessed November 6, 2020). 357 See: Srećko Ignjatović, “Tehnički podaci za prugu normalnog kolosijeka Vinkovci – Brčko, 1961. godine,”. 358 See: [Ministarstvo komunikacija i prometa BiH], “Okvirna Strategija Prometa Bosne I Hercegovine,”, https://mpv-hnz-k.ba/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Okvirna-strategija-prometa-BiH-Bosanski.pdf (accessed February 10, 2021), 49. 359 See: Srećko Ignjatović, “Istorija razvoja putničkog saobraćaja uzanog kolosijeka u BiH,”. 360 See: Elmar Oberegger, “Bosnisch-Herzegowinische Eisenbahnen,”. 361 See: Red vožnje 1989/90. 79
and Herzegovina also reconnected with Serbia, when a daily train from Banja Luka to Belgrade (via Croatian Vinkovci) began to operate at the end of 2002 as well. 362 According to a media outlet, which announced the connection to Serbia already for May 2000, the trains from Banja Luka to Belgrade would have passed through North-Eastern Bosnian Tuzla. This, in turn, would have implied the usage of the border at Brčko to get to Vinkovci (and a small detour to reach Tuzla, see Map 6).363 However, since the information table by the ŽRS indicates that the connection Banja Luka–Belgrade existed only from December 2002,364 it is likely that the link had been advertised prematurely and its establishment became delayed by two years. It remains unclear whether the link was eventually realised via Tuzla and Brčko, as initially planned, or if – like in socialist times – the border at Šamac was used instead. This would not have been feasible in 2000, but it was in 2002, since Šamac was reopened as the fourth railway border crossing with Croatia that year.365 The new border crossing re- established the possibility of railway traffic on the whole length of the Vc corridor through Bosnia and Herzegovina and implemented a key idea of the modernisation and construction of a transport network within the frame of the Pan-European transport scheme – the opening of borders and improved cooperation between neighbourly regions.366 Marić also points out the “geo-economic dimension”367 of a fully accessible Vc for Croatia, since it represents a connection from Eastern Slavonia to Southern Dalmatia that is much shorter than the route via Central Croatia. Let us now take a look on the political situation in the region which may have impacted the reintegration of railway systems between 2000 and 2002. According to the BH journalist and civil rights activist Štefica Galić, the political relations between the two entities were in the years after the war more relaxed than today (2020).368 Nearly all elections in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina had been won by nationalist parties,369 yet the turn of the millennium was
362 See: Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., E-Mail to Florian Supe. 363 See: b92.net, “Voz Banjaluka - Beograd,”, April 17, 2000, https://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?dd=17&mm=04&nav_category=1&nav_id=6147&yyyy=2000 (accessed November 23, 2020). 364 See: Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., E-Mail to Florian Supe. 365 See: Elmar Oberegger, “Bosnisch-Herzegowinische Eisenbahnen,”. 366 See: Marić, “Corridor Vc as a factor of integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina into the European Union,”: 97. 367 Ibid., 100. 368 See: Štefica Galić to Florian Supe, January 11, 2021. 369 See: Heleen Touquet, “The Republika Srpska as a Strong Nationalizing State and Theconsequences for Postethnic Activism,” Nationalities Papers 40, no. 2 (2012): 203. This assessment was made in 2012, but it holds true up until today, with an increasing number of exceptions in recent years. 80
an exceptional time in that regard. From March 2001 until October 2002,370 the Federation of BiH was governed by the “Alliance for Change”, a coalition between the social democrats and smaller parties, “brought together under the supervision of the international community”.371 In Croatia and Serbia, the parties of the respective nationalist strongmen Franjo Tuđman and Slobodan Milošević had both lost elections in the year 2000 after the death of the former and the ousting of the latter. As a consequence, Croatia was ruled by a social liberal coalition led by the social democrats from January 2000 until December 2003, and Serbia by a coalition formed by the liberal Democratic Party from January 2001 until March 2004.372 That means the reintroduction of the train connections with Zagreb in June 2000, with Belgrade and Budapest in December 2002 and the introduction of the BH inter-entity line Tuzla–Brčko in 2002 were conducted in a period where nationalist forces where swamped out of many governments around the region. The proof of a correlation, however, would require additional qualitative in-depth research. In any case, such research would have to take into consideration that the first wave of railway reconnection occurred already in 1998.
3.3. Stagnation, abandonment and new investment (2003–2020)
After this initial period of considerable railway reconnection and transport reintegration between the BH entities, Croatia and Serbia (on the borders at Metković, Dobrljin, Šamac, Brčko, Rača and Zvornik; with inter-entity trains between Sarajevo and Banja Luka, Doboj and Tuzla, Tuzla and Brčko) followed a phase of stability or, from a different viewpoint, stagnation. From 2003 onwards, the railway connectivity of BiH remained relatively constant; except for the peripheral Bijeljina–Šid line, no more communications were suspended or revived for nearly a decade, only on certain routes the number of daily passenger trains fluctuated. A
370 See: Bosnia´s Alliance for (Smallish) Change, International Crisis Group Report 132 (Sarajevo/Brussels, 2002), 1. Touquet states the the Alliance had been in power in the years 2000/2001 instead, probably a mistake. It was only created in January 2001, two months after the general elections in November 2000, then formed a government in March and was still in power in August 2002, when the International Crisis Group published its report. See: Bosnia´s Alliance for (Smallish) Change, 1 371 Touquet, “The Republika Srpska as a strong nationalizing state and theconsequences for postethnic activism,”: 211. 372 See: Jill A. Irvine, “Electoral Breakthroughs in Croatia and Serbia: Women’s Organizing and International Assistance,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 46 (2013): 244-246, 249; See: Eric Gordy, “Serbia After Djindjic: War Crimes, Organized Crime, and Trust in Public Institutions,” Problems of Post-Communism 51, no. 3 (2004): 10, https://cutt.ly/ZjWRHsB (accessed January 14, 2021). The cited dates refer to periods of governance rather than election dates. 81
stagnation, however, can be only recorded in the quantitative sense, while the quality of the lines in use was considerably improved. This strategic approach is explained in the medium-term development strategy of BiH for the years 2004–2007,373 according to which the post-war reconstruction of the railway scheme is divided into three phases. In the first phase until 2003, the focus had been on creating the possibility of railway transport on the better part of the scheme, with reduced speed and without the renovation of expensive security and signalling systems though. For this purpose, approximately 70 million USD had been donated. During the second phase, financed with credits by the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, investments in communication and security systems, the rehabilitation of building infrastructure and preparations for the modernisation of the rolling stock were conducted to make rail transport more attractive. Most of the related projects should have been conducted by 2006.374 This second step was badly needed, since the volume of freight and passenger railway transport had only reached around 15% in comparison to 1990.375 In an evaluation of the status quo (probably in 2003) in the development strategy, it is deplored that the capacities of the existing railway network are constrained by unrefurbished tracks, the lack of security at level crossings and railway stations, the low capacity of garages and the old and insufficient rolling stock. Especially highlighted is the lack of passenger coaches for middle and long-distance connections. In the freight sector, the still low quantities of heavy industrial goods transported like coal and ore impeded the cost recovery and produced high financial loss.376 In this strategy paper, the following data is listed: the length of the BH railway scheme amounts to 1041 km (425 in RS, 616 in FbiH), of which only 87 km are laid in double track, although 776 km are electrified.377 However, this is only an inventory of the network that exists in principle and does not offer information on the share of lines that were fit for use that year, or on the share of lines where the electrification actually worked. In the third phase of railway reconstruction, the paper states, the railway system should be brought “to
373 Despite the fact that the year 2008 is cited on the website of the BH Directorate for Economic Planning, the text suggests that it was written before 2004. The exact year cannot be determined, since neither the introduction of the publication nor any metadata are available online. 374 See: Srednjoročna Razvojna Strategija BiH 2004–2007 (Sarajevo, [2003]), http://www.dep.gov.ba/dokumenti_politika/srednjorocna_razvojna_strategija/default.aspx?id=133&langTag= bs-BA (accessed January 13, 2021), 210. 375 See: ibid., 209. 376 See: ibid. 377 See: ibid. 82
the level which international agreements require.”378 One decade later, those requirements became an interesting factor in the cross-border connectivity of BiH. The stocktaking in Map 6, also without information on the routes in use, offers slightly diverging figures on the length of railway tracks, which can be partly explained by the fact that the section in Brčko District is separately cited. Yet, the overall length is 11 km shorter here. Lines in the Republika Srpska are marked in blue, lines in the Federation of BiH in red. The industrial North-East is the only region where links had never been electrified.
Map 6: The railway network of Bosnia and Herzegovina379
378 Ibid., 210. 379 The Railway Network of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia and Herzegovina Railways Public Corporation, n.d. [2015]), http://www.bhzjk.ba/ENG/about.html (accessed November 2, 2020). 83
Not covered by the map and the given figures is the discontinued narrow-gauge mountain route “Šarganska Osmica” from Višegrad in Eastern Bosnia to Mokra Gora in Western Serbia, which underwent rehabilitation and started to communicate again for touristic purposes in 2003.380 Although the line bears little significance for the transport connectivity of Bosnia and Herzegovina and is therefore omitted in the further count of railway border crossings, the joint project is a noteworthy linkage of two spaces divided by a state border. Of more importance was the suspension of passenger trains on the international line Bijeljina– Šid in 2005, followed soon after by the abandonment of freight trains. The shutdown of export-oriented factories and the declining numbers of passengers are cited as reasons for the total discontinuation of the track.381 The route was only of local importance, since it had never been connected to the rest of the BH railway system, but it had had a high frequency of connections in 1990 and was the only trans-border line that had worked regularly in wartime. In December 2007, the Ploče–Sarajevo–Zagreb link was strengthened with a second daily train. Two years later, however, one of the two trains ceased to operate from Sarajevo southwards, leaving one international train Ploče–Sarajevo–Zagreb and one communicating solely between the Bosnian Herzegovinian and Croatian capitals. The end of 2009 also brought a second important change in international traffic: from then on, the train to Belgrade did not depart from Banja Luka, but from Sarajevo.382 The fact that the capital of the Federation became directly linked to Serbia is strong evidence for the normalisation of political relations between the neighbours. Narcis Džumhur, then director general of ŽFBiH, stated that it had not previously been possible to receive an agreement for the use of the necessary tracks in Croatia and Serbia.383 The decennial period of infrastructural rehabilitation and relatively stable railway connectivity ended in 2012, when the payment difficulties of the Federation’s railway company had mounted to an extent which did not allow for the status quo to be maintained any longer. In its public communication, the ŽFBiH frequently accused its owner, the Federation, and the
380 See: Srećko Ignjatović, “Ilidžanci Vagoni, (H)Istorija,”, http://vremeplov.ba/?p=18797 (accessed February 10, 2021). 381 See: noviglas.info, “Semberija – Kada je pisak lokomotive odjekivao semberskom ravnicom,”. 382 See: Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., E-Mail to Florian Supe. 383 See: Selma Boračić-Mršo, “Nakon 18 Godina Vozom Od Sarajeva Do Beograda,” slobodnaevropa.org, December 13, 2009, https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/zeljeznicka_linija_sarajevo_beograd_sarajevo/1902745.html (accessed January 15, 2021). 84
lower-level Cantonal governments of not fulfilling their legal duties of co-financing railway services.384 In December 2012, the local passenger trains between Bihać and Bosanski Novi/Novi Grad and between Tuzla and Brčko were suspended owing to the “impossibility to cover the financial losses”.385 Since the respective railway guidebooks cannot be obtained, this announcement is the only available proof that the North-Western Bosnian Krajina with its centre Bihać had been connected to Sarajevo (with changing in Novi Grad) between 1999 and 2012. The end of 2012 also brought severe cuts in the scarce international passenger connections. With the timetable change in December, the Sarajevo–Belgrade386 and Sarajevo–Budapest387 links were suspended. The last evidence for the existence of the train from BiH to Hungary is a press release about its involvement in a car accident in Croatia that does not mention the abandonment of the line three weeks later. This might be without significance but could also indicate that the suspension of the connection was not publicly announced in advance.388 At the same time, the connectivity with Croatia was also reduced. One of the daily trains between Zagreb and Sarajevo was abandoned in December 2012, while the other continued to supply the Zagreb–Ploče route. One year later, however, that train ceased to run through the Neretva valley as well and proceeded to communicate only between Zagreb and Sarajevo.389 Probably from then on, passenger transport on the Southern branch of the BH North-South railway axis was only conducted with regional trains and not offered until Metković, but only until Čapljina, the last municipality on the BH side of the border, as was the case in 2016.390 On the Croatian side, in April 2014, the local trains between Ploče and Metković were substituted by busses according to local news, leaving the Dalmatian section of the Vc corridor without any railway
384 Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, “Saopćenje Za Javnost Povodom Ukidanja Putničkih Linija Bihać- Bosanski Novi I Tuzla –Brčko,”, https://www.zfbh.ba/saopcenje-za-javnost-povodom-ukidanja-putnickih-linija- bihac-bosanski-novi-i-tuzla-brcko/ (accessed November 4, 2020). 385 Ibid. 386 See: Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., E-Mail to Florian Supe. 387 See: Srećko Ignjatović, “Istorija razvoja putničkog saobraćaja uzanog kolosijeka u BiH,”. 388 See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, “Kamion U Hrvatskoj Podletio Pod Voz Na Liniji Sarajevo- Budimpešta,”, https://www.zfbh.ba/kamion-u-hrvatskoj-podletio-pod-voz-na-liniji-sarajevo-budimpesta/ (accessed January 16, 2021). 389 See: Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., E-Mail to Florian Supe. 390 See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, Red vožnje The guidebook is scanned without pagination; the cited information refers to page 17 of the pdf document. 85
passenger connection.391 Since no technical reason and no time span were offered with the announcement, this was apparently a long-term arrangement. In mid May 2014, Bosnia and Herzegovina was affected by a major flooding which also caused severe damage to the railway system. Several connections (e.g. Doboj–Sarajevo, Dobrljin– Novi Grad–Banja Luka, and Doboj–Tuzla) had to be temporarily suspended for freight and passenger trains, as online reports record.392 After the wave of railway disintegration in 2012 and the flooding of 2014, the further fate of connectivity in the BH North-East is the next topic that draws attention. On the Doboj–Tuzla route, the state before the inundation was re-established in June 2014. However, according to a ŽRS press announcement, this comprised only one train a day per direction, which is contradictory to the two connections noted in the scheme I received directly from the company.393 In 2015, the ŽRS announced the beginning of aligning studies and the project documentation for the comprehensive modernisation of the route from Doboj via Tuzla to Brčko. It should be made fit for a speed up to 120 km/h, which would partly require a new track with less sharp bends. The aligning project should have been finished by September 2016; however, neither ŽRS nor ŽFBiH ever provided information about the completion of the preparatory work.394 At the same time, Serbian media covered a related project: the possible revival of a direct Sarajevo–Belgrade railway connection via Zvornik, the timely realisation of which was allegedly desired by Serbia and BiH likewise.395 The necessary modernisation on both sides of the border – again for a speed up to 120 km/h – would partly overlap with the abovementioned aligning work, since the trains to Belgrade would also use the section between Doboj and Tuzla. The article states that the possible maximum speed on the Serbian side of the track, between Ruma and Brasina, was currently (2015) alternating between only
391 See: PločeOnline, “Autobusi Zamijenili Vlakove,”, April 28, 2014, https://ploce.com.hr/politika/autobusi- zamijenili-vlakove/ (accessed January 16, 2021). 392 See: Srna, “Od Sutra Saobraća Voz Na Relaciji Doboj - Tuzla - Doboj,” klix.ba, June 2, 2014, https://www.klix.ba/vijesti/bih/od-sutra-saobraca-voz-na-relaciji-doboj-tuzla-doboj/140602126 (accessed November 6, 2020); See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, “Svi Putni Pravci Na Prugama ŽFBiH Prohodni,”, https://www.zfbh.ba/svi-putni-pravci-na-prugama-zfbih-prohodni/ (accessed January 18, 2021). 393 See: Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., “Obavještenje O Putničkom Saobraćaju,”, https://www.zrs-rs.com/zrs- media/saopstenja-za-javnost/223-obavjestenje-o-putnickom-saobracaju (accessed January 11, 2021). 394 See: Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., “Rekonstrukcija I Modernizacija Pruge Doboj – Tuzla – Brčko,”, https://www.zrs-rs.com/20-vijesti/591-rekonstrukcija-i-modernizacija-pruge-doboj-tuzla-brcko (accessed January 18, 2021). 395 See: Z. R., “Pruga Spaja Prestonice,” novosti.rs, November 4, 2015, https://www.novosti.rs/vesti/naslovna/ekonomija/aktuelno.239.html:575167-Pruga-spaja-prestonice (accessed January 18, 2021). 86
20 and 60 km/h.396 However, like the modernisation between Doboj, Tuzla and Brčko, this project also vanished from the publicly discussed agenda and only reappeared in 2020. In the meantime, contradicting signals were sent for the railway connectivity in the Tuzla region. In 2017, ŽFBiH announced the operation of an additional, third local passenger train between Doboj and Tuzla with a further connecting train in Doboj to Banja Luka, starting in August.397 The company of the Federation stated that “it is the first time that Tuzla gets connected to Banja Luka with rail passenger transport”.398 This suggests that there were no reasonable connecting trains to the capital of the RS before, which may be true for the post- war period, but not for socialist BiH. As shown in Chapter 2.5, Tuzla could be reached twice a day from Banja Luka in 1990, although the waiting time in Doboj (nearly one hour on one occasion) was not particularly attractive.399 According to online media, the new 2017 inter-entity link operated by the ŽFBiH would replace one of the ŽRS trains that had run from Doboj eastwards but had stopped half way to Tuzla at the entity border at Petrovo Novo.400 Subsequently, there were three Doboj–Tuzla trains from 2017 onwards. While this improvement of the connectivity was obviously an investment in the route, recent development showed that it did not bring the anticipated success. Only two years after the launch of the third daily train, the connection Doboj–Tuzla was completely discontinued in December 2019.401 A media report cites the lack of rolling stock and the “negligible number of passengers” (on average 12 per train) as the reasons given by the ŽRS for that step.402 Since Tuzla–Brčko had been suspended for passengers already in 2012403 and there has been no information on passenger links between Tuzla and Zvornik since 1996, Tuzla – the third
396 See: ibid. 397 See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, “Željeznice FBiH Povezuju BH Vozom Sarajevo, Tuzlu I Banja Luku,”, https://www.zfbh.ba/zeljeznice-fbih-povezuju-bh-vozom-sarajevo-tuzlu-i-banja-luku/ (accessed November 4, 2020). 398 Ibid. 399 See: Red vožnje 1989/90, 238-239, 277. 400 See: Srna, “Talgo Voz Sarajevo-Doboj-Banjaluka Od 1. Avgusta,” blic.rs, July 21, 2017, https://www.blic.rs/vesti/republika-srpska/talgo-voz-sarajevo-doboj-banjaluka-od-1-avgusta/5w5npnr (accessed January 11, 2021). 401 See: Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., E-Mail to Florian Supe. 402 See: b92.net, “Poslednji Putnički Voz Prošao Je Kroz Tuzlu Danas,”, December 15, 2019, https://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2019&mm=12&dd=15&nav_category=167&nav_id=1631131 (accessed January 11, 2021). 403 See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, “Saopćenje za javnost povodom ukidanja putničkih linija Bihać- Bosanski Novi i Tuzla –Brčko,”. 87
biggest urban centre of BiH and once an important railway node – has not been accessible by train at all since the end of 2019.404 Another long-term problem of the Bosnian Herzegovinian railway system was alleviated in 2016, when the purchase of two modern Talgo trains by the ŽFBiH brought remedy to the chronical scarcity of passenger trains.405 The investment in trains with a maximum speed of 160 km/h,406 however, only makes sense in combination with tracks that can bear that pace. The Talgo trains are named “BH train”, a statement for the claim of the ŽFBiH to link the whole country and act as a unifier,407 which is explicitly accentuated by the director general Enis Džafić: “Our goal is to connect Bosnia and Herzegovina and to be an integral part of the European transport streams.”408 He also stated that negotiations with Croatian Railways (HŽ) about the reintroduction of the passenger connection to Ploče with the new trains were conducted.409 However, the development of the cross-border connectivity of BiH went in the opposite direction. In December 2017, Bosnia and Herzegovina lost its last international passenger connection, when the daily train between Sarajevo and Zagreb was suspended.410 The reasons for this suspension remain dubious. According to the ŽRS, it was not caused by the low economic viability of the line, but by new regulations from the International Union of Railways (UIC), which required a certain standard for rolling stock used in international transport. Until 2017, HŽ, ŽRS and ŽFBiH had all contributed with an equal number of coaches to the Sarajevo–Zagreb line, but ŽRS does not have coaches which fulfil the new International
404 See: Hercegovina.info, “Objavljen Novi Red Vožnje Vlakova Željeznica FBiH,”, December 4, 2019, https://www.hercegovina.info/vijesti/vijesti/bih/objavljen-novi-red-voznje-vlakova-zeljeznica-fbih-177651/ (accessed November 6, 2020) and Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., Red Vožnje: 15.12.2019. - 12.12.2020. (Doboj, 2019), 13. 405 See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, ““Talgo” Od Ponedjeljka U Redovnom Saobraćaju,”, https://www.zfbh.ba/talgo-od-ponedjeljka-u-redovnom-saobracaju/ (accessed January 19, 2021). 406 See: M. T., “Voz Banja Luka - Sarajevo: Kupljena 31 Karta, Talgo Otišao, Dugovanja Ostala,”, August 2, 2017, https://www.klix.ba/biznis/voz-banja-luka-sarajevo-kupljena-31-karta-talgo-otisao-dugovanja- ostala/170802047 (accessed November 4, 2020). 407 On another occasion, Director General Enis Džafić stated that the ŽFBiH’s mission was to secure “free and unimpeded movement of people and goods on the whole state territory,” a direct reference to a central integral provision of the Dayton Constitution. See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, “Željeznice FBiH povezuju BH Vozom Sarajevo, Tuzlu i Banja Luku,”; See: The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Annex 4, Art.1/10. 408 Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, ““Talgo” od ponedjeljka u redovnom saobraćaju,”; Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, “Željeznice FBiH povezuju BH Vozom Sarajevo, Tuzlu i Banja Luku,”. 409 See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, ““Talgo” od ponedjeljka u redovnom saobraćaju,”. 410 See: Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., E-Mail to Florian Supe. 88
Coach Regulation (RIC) requirements. The ŽFBiH offered the Talgo trains instead, but for unknown reasons no contract could be concluded with HŽ.411 New RIC regulations, however, became valid already in January 2014; they substituted the last agreement from 2001. All three stakeholder companies for the Sarajevo–Zagreb route are listed as RIC partners in the document from 2014, which does not include information about any transitional period.412 Subsequently, RIC requirements do not explain the suspension of the last international railway line of BiH three years later. Unlike the total disintegration with Croatia, the railway connectivity within BiH was raised in 2017. After nearly two years of reconstruction work on the route, the fast Sarajevo–Čapljina trains started to communicate again in June.413 As mentioned above, Doboj–Tuzla received a third daily connection in August, and with the timetable change in December, the suspension of the international link to Zagreb was made up for with the introduction of a second daily direct train on the main inter-entity Sarajevo–Banja Luka communication.414 Apparently, the Sarajevo–Banja Luka–Zagreb train had offered the only direct railway connection between the two biggest BH cities until 2017, while passengers had to change in Doboj for the other daily link until its substitution by a direct Talgo train in July.415 Hence, in total two daily Sarajevo–Banja Luka connections have existed most years since 2000: one direct international train and one domestic link with changing in Doboj until 2017; two direct domestic links since 2017. Between 2008 and 2012, the second international (Ploče–) Sarajevo–Zagreb train had led to increased connectivity on the route.416 In 2017, local media also reported on a “joint initiative” by the transport ministers of Croatia and BiH to lobby their respective governments for the reconstruction of the Una line (Zagreb– Bihać–Knin).417 While the idea to bring this formerly important route back into operation had apparently not been further pursued until today, a section of it had experienced a revival
411 See: ibid. 412 See: International Union of Railways, “Vereinbarung Über Den Austausch Und Die Benutzung Der Reisezugwagen Im Internationalen Verkehr,”, https://uic.org/IMG/pdf/extract_ric_2014-01-01_de.pdf (accessed January 19, 2021), I-1. 413 See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, “BH Vozom Ponovo Prema Jugu,”, https://www.zfbh.ba/bh- vozom-ponovo-prema-jugu/ (accessed January 19, 2021). 414 See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, “Željeznice FBiH Uvele I Jutarnji Voz Sarajevo-Banja Luka,”, https://www.zfbh.ba/zeljeznice-fbih-uvele-i-jutarnji-voz-sarajevo-banja-luka/ (accessed January 19, 2021). 415 See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, Red vožnje, 16. 416 See: Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., E-Mail to Florian Supe. 417 See: cazin.net, “Sarajlije Uskoro Vozom Na More: Do Kad Će Krajišnici Čekati Liniju Bihać – Split, Bihać – Sarajevo?,”, June 6, 2017, https://www.cazin.net/vijesti/sarajlije-uskoro-vozom-na-more-do-kad-ce-krajisnici- cekati-liniju-bihac-split-bihac (accessed January 19, 2021). 89
already one year later. After the completion of reconstruction work and the electrification between Bihać and the entity border at Blatna, one of the two daily trains from Sarajevo to Banja Luka was extended to the BH North-West in August 2018. For the first time since 1999, Bihać could be directly reached by train from Sarajevo. With this achievement, the centre of the Krajina region was reconnected again to the BH railway system after the link had been completely severed with the discontinuation of the local trains to Novi Grad in 2012.
Map 7: Railway Map of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, cropped and modified, 2018 or 2019418
418 Maximilian Dörrbecker, Railway Map of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (Wikimedia, n.d. [2018 or 2019]), https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Railway_map_of_Croatia_and_Bosnia_and_Herzegovi na.png (accessed January 21, 2021). After the cropping, the information table was shifted to the right, which led to an inaccurate depiction of some Southern Dalmatian islands. 90
Hence, railway connectivity within BiH had reached a considerable level again in 2018, as most sections of the existing scheme were supplied by passenger trains. However, as mentioned before, in 2019 the passenger trains on the Doboj–Tuzla track were discontinued completely. Taking those years as a reference point, the following paragraphs are devoted to a comprehensive stocktaking of the BH railway network and the offered passenger connectivity, followed by its comparison to the state in 1990. Map 6 shows the usage of the BH railway network between December 2017 December 2019, which can be determined by the facts that the border section between Dobrljin and Volinja (that had been used by the passenger trains Sarajevo–Zagreb) is only marked as passage for freight transport and the line Doboj–Tuzla is still used by passenger trains. The ŽRS offer detailed figures about their railway scheme on their website. Since the information has probably not been updated since 2014, however, it is not clear if it is still up- to-date. The overall length of lines under authority of the company is cited with 417 km, among which also 18 km (suspended) narrow-gauge lines are counted. Ca. 353 km of the (standard-gauge) scheme are actively exploited by ŽRS, another 18 km are used by Serbian railways,419 which leaves 46 km out of exploitation. Lines 308 km long are electrified, while 111 km are not.420 Assuming that all electrified lines are used, that leaves 63 km unelectrified lines in exploitation. Exploitation does not differentiate if the tracks are used only for freight transport or for passenger transport as well. The ŽFBiH website, on the other hand, denotes a railway scheme 608.5 km long under the authority of the federation company, 21 km more than cited in Map 6.421 This could be explained if most railway sections in the Brčko District (which is cited separately in Map 6) belong to the ŽFBiH. However, since Ignjatović mentions that the railway station Brčko is property of the ŽRS,422 this matter remains unclear. Besides the abovementioned figures, no more information is offered about the scheme of the ŽFBiH.
419 Apparently, this refers to the small section of the Belgrade–Bar line that crosses a part of BiH, possibly also to another section in Eastern Bosnia. 420 See: Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., “Mapa Pruga,”, https://www.zrs-rs.com/kompanija/mapa-pruga (accessed January 21, 2021). 421 See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, “Infrastruktura ŽFBH,”, https://www.zfbh.ba/infrastruktura/#duzina-pruga (accessed January 21, 2021). 422 See: Srećko Ignjatović, “Tehnički podaci za prugu normalnog kolosijeka Vinkovci – Brčko, 1961. godine,”. 91
The combined schemes of the entities amount to a stock of 1025 km railway lines in BiH, 16 km less than recorded in the economic strategy paper from 2003423 and less than half of what existed in 1965, the year of the – probably – widest extension of the network before the suspension of the narrow-gauge system. Up until today, the only double-tracked railway section in BiH spans a length of 93 km424 between Srpska Kostajnica (near Doboj) in the RS and Zenica in the FBiH.425 Let us now turn to the passenger connections offered on those lines in 2017 and early 2020. Mostly, I refer to the guidebooks by the two companies that entered into force in December 2019, even though the Corona pandemic entailed a timetable change and factually fewer inter-entity connections from Spring 2020. For the communication Doboj–Tuzla, I take 2017 as a reference point, two years before the passenger links were discontinued.426 On the central inter-entity link between Sarajevo and Banja Luka, the companies envisaged two daily trains with a minimum travel time of 4 hours 33 minutes.427 In 1990, the distance was covered in 3 hours 35 minutes – one hour quicker – with the fastest (a night train) of six trains in 24 hours.428 In the Republika Srpska in 2020, six daily local trains were scheduled on the Banja Luka–Doboj route, the fastest one took 1 hour 25 minutes.429 Between Banja Luka and Novi Grad, five daily connections were offered, the minimum travel time amounted to 1 hour 33 minutes. In 1990, those two sections were supplied by twelve trains (minimum travel time 1 hour 12 minutes) and ten trains (minimum travel time 1 hour 6 minutes) respectively, some of them night trains on the Zagreb–Sarajevo route that only stopped at bigger stations.430 The Sarajevo–Bihać link was offered once a day in 2020 and took 8 hours 34 minutes,431 two hours more than in 1990 (6 hours 31 minutes). Before the Bosnian War, there had been one direct connection and an additional one with a change in Novi Grad.432
423 See: Srednjoročna razvojna strategija BiH 2004–2007, 209. 424 68.5 km are located in the Federation, 24.6 km in the RS. See: Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., “Mapa pruga,”; See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, “Infrastruktura ŽFBH,”. 425 See: Map 6. 426 For 2018, no information on the travel time is available. 427 See: Hercegovina.info, “Objavljen novi red vožnje vlakova Željeznica FBiH,”. 428 See: Red vožnje 1989/90, 120–21. 429 See: Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., Red vožnje, 9, 11-12. 430 See: Red vožnje 1989/90, 238–39. 431 See: Hercegovina.info, “Objavljen novi red vožnje vlakova Željeznica FBiH,”. 432 See: Red vožnje 1989/90, 120–21. 92
In the Federation of BiH, two daily trains communicated between Sarajevo and Mostar in 2020. The travel time amounted to 1 hour 55 minutes for the faster train.433 In 1990, the communication was supplied by nine daily trains with a minimum travel time of 1 hour 46 minutes.434 On the inter-entity Doboj–Tuzla link, passengers had three daily trains with a travel time of 1 hour 36 minutes at their disposal in 2017.435 One of them was introduced as a connecting train from/to Sarajevo, but no information on the travel time from Sarajevo to Tuzla is available. Before the war, the Doboj–Tuzla route was supplied by six trains that ran with a minimum travel time of 1 hour 27 minutes.436 In addition to the cited connections, local passenger trains communicated in 2020 between Doboj and Petrovo Novo in the RS and connected Sarajevo– Zenica, Sarajevo–Kakanj, Zenica–Podlugovi and Zenica–Maglaj in the Federation.437 Before its suspension in 2017, the fast train Sarajevo–Zagreb had bridged the distance in 9 hours 20 minutes,438 which was nearly one third longer than the minimum travel time in 1990 (6 hours 30 minutes).439 Using the Sarajevo–Belgrade connection before its abandonment in 2012, passengers starting from BiH could have reached the Serbian capital within 8 hours 25 minutes,440 as opposed to 5 hours 51 minutes before the war.441 In December 2019, Serbian Railways installed a daily passenger train from Belgrade to Zvornik in Eastern Bosnia, offering the first passenger connection between the two countries since 2012.442 A blog entry from 2018 about the reconstruction process suggests that the trains do indeed cross the border and terminate in the station Zvornik on BH territory (that was built in a village 4km North of the town only in 1992), and not in the older station Zvornik Grad that is located on the Serbian side of the Drina.443 On the BH side, however, there is no further
433 See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, “Red Vožnje Sarajevo-Mostar,”, https://www.zfbh.ba/red- voznje/ (accessed November 25, 2020). 434 See: Red vožnje 1989/90, 116–17. 435 See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, “Željeznice FBiH povezuju BH Vozom Sarajevo, Tuzlu i Banja Luku,”. 436 See: Red vožnje 1989/90, 120. 437 See: Hercegovina.info, “Objavljen novi red vožnje vlakova Željeznica FBiH,”; See: Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., Red vožnje, 13. 438 See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, Red vožnje, 15–16. 439 See: Red vožnje 1989/90, 120–21. 440 See: Boračić-Mršo, “Nakon 18 godina vozom od Sarajeva do Beograda,”. 441 See: Red vožnje 1989/90, 116–17. 442 See: M.N., “Srbija Od 15. Decembra Uvodi Voz Na Relaciji Beograd - Zvornik,” klix.ba, December 13, 2019, https://www.klix.ba/biznis/srbija-od-15-decembra-uvodi-voz-na-relaciji-beograd-zvornik/191213107 (accessed February 9, 2021). 443 See: polazak.rs, “Železnički Red Vožnje 2018/2019,”, https://www.polazak.rs/sr/blog/Zeleznicki-red-voznje- 2018-2019/ (accessed February 9, 2021). 93
connection. With the introduction of this link, Zvornik (or rather the village Karakaj) was the only international railway border of Bosnia and Herzegovina that was traversed by regular passenger trains in 2020;444 but according to Map 7, four other borders were used by freight trains.445 Overall, besides all reconstruction efforts, modern Bosnia and Herzegovina suffered a dramatic loss of railway connectivity in comparison with late socialist Yugoslavia. This is most striking in the number of daily passenger trains that link the different parts of the country – except for local trains within one entity, only one or two, and a maximum of three connections are offered – but is also shown in the strongly increased travel time for most links and in the fact that the Tuzla basin in the North-East has been left without any passenger trains since 2019. In the same year, a BH media outlet reports about an attempt by the ŽFBiH to re-establish the international railway connection from Sarajevo to Ploče. Enis Džafić publically deplores the “discriminatory policy” by Croatia that would prevent the reconnection with the neighbouring state. The director general of the company is cited with the following explanation for the isolation of the BH railway system:
“The Croatian Railways simply closed all corridors on which we can reach the Croatian railway tracks for passenger transport from Bosnia and Herzegovina. […] Obviously, it is a policy especially directed at Bosnia, that transport has been shut down that had functioned before without any problems. Already in 2013 they decided to suspend all the passenger transport towards Bosnia. The responsible ministries on federation and state level are informed […] that they should take measures so that we can get to Ploče with our trains, respectively that the line Sarajevo–Vrpolje is opened, that the link to the mainline Belgrade–Zagreb is established and so on. This is a discriminatory policy by Croatia on the one hand, and on the other there is insufficient engagement of our politicians to defy it.“446
Indeed, an article from 2012, the year in which BiH had suffered the loss of nearly all international railway connections, confirms that their suspension had been required by the Croatian Railways. Several connections from Croatia to Slovenia and Serbia had been affected as well. The reasons invoked by the HŽ were “the rationalisation of business, the high
444 This statement does not consider possible cuts in connectivity induced by the Corona virus pandemic. 445 See: Map 7. 446 Enis Džafić, interview by E. Duvnjak-Šalaka, June 1, 2019. Translated from Bosnian by Florian Supe. 94
expenditure and the small yield” of cross-border passenger trains.447 Members of the Railway Unions of all affected countries, including Croatia, had protested against the suspension; a ŽFBiH representative had warned of the political and economic connotations that the discontinuation of passenger traffic in the region would have.448 It cannot be determined to which extent the suspension of the lines and the unwillingness by Croatia to re-establish them was (and still is), as Džafić alleges, politically motivated, and to which extent economic reasons played a role. In 2012, a major point of contention was the cost allocation of international passenger traffic. According to the article, HŽ offered ŽFBiH to pursue the connections if the BH company paid for the usage of tracks in Croatia. However, a ŽFBiH spokeswoman complained that HŽ offered prices that were five times higher than the real cost of the track. Apparently, an agreement had been reached, since one of the Sarajevo– Zagreb trains continued its service until 2017, contrary to the HŽ announcement from 2012 that all passenger railway links with BiH would be suspended.449 Now, the acquired knowledge about connectivity shall be briefly compared with the available quantitative data about passenger transport. Figure 1 shows that after a slight recovery until 2008, the Railways of the Republika Srpska nearly continuously lost importance in the passenger sector between 2008 and 2017, when a new upturn started. The Railways of FBiH could register a continuous steep incline in passenger kilometres already since 2016, when the company suffered its low. No ŽFBiH data is available for the period before 2014.
447 Selma Boračić-Mršo, “Željezničari Protiv Hrvatskog Zahtjeva Za Ukidanje Međunarodnih Linija,” slobodnaevropa.org, June 22, 2012, https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/zeljeznicari-protiv-hrvatskog-zahtjeva- za-ukidanje-linija-iz-bih/24622988.html (accessed January 25, 2021). 448 See: ibid. 449 See: ibid. 95
The development of railway passenger transport in BiH in thousand passenger kilometres per year 45000 40000 35000 30000 25000 20000 15000 10000 5000 0 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
ŽFBiH ŽRS
Figure 1450
450 See: Transport and Communications (Banja Luka, 2009); Statistical Bulletin 1, https://www.rzs.rs.ba/front/category/175/?page=1 (accessed January 28, 2021), 21; See: Transport and Communications (Banja Luka, 2012); Statistical Bulletin 5, https://www.rzs.rs.ba/front/category/175/?page=1 (accessed January 28, 2021), 19; See: Transport and Communications (Banja Luka, 2017); Statistical Bulletin 10, https://www.rzs.rs.ba/front/category/175/?page=1 (accessed January 28, 2021), 16; See: Transport and Communications (Banja Luka, 2019); Statistical Bulletin, https://www.rzs.rs.ba/front/category/175/?page=1 (accessed January 28, 2021), 16; See: Transport and Communications, 2nd, revised edition (Banja Luka, 2020); Statistical Bulletin, https://www.rzs.rs.ba/static/uploads/bilteni/saobracaj/Bilten_Saobracaj_2020_Drugo_Izmijenjeno_Izdanje_w eb.pdf (accessed January 28, 2021), 16; See: Transport of Passengers and Goods in 2014 (Sarajevo, 2015); 5.1.5., https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=http://fzs.ba/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/5.1.5-1.pdf (accessed January 26, 2021), 2; See: Rail Transport of Passengers and Goods, 1st Quarter 2015 (Sarajevo, 2015); 5.4.1., https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=http://fzs.ba/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/5.4.1-1.pdf (accessed January 26, 2021), 2; See: Rail Transport of Passengers and Goods, 2nd Quarter 2015 (Sarajevo, 2015); 5.4.2., https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=http://fzs.ba/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/5.4.2.pdf (accessed January 26, 2021), 2; See: Rail Transport of Passengers and Goods, 3rd Quarter 2015 (Sarajevo, 2015); 5.4.3., https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=http://fzs.ba/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/5.4.3.pdf (accessed January 26, 2021), 2; See: Rail Transport of Passengers and Goods, 4th Quarter 2015 (Sarajevo, 2016); 5.4.4., https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=http://fzs.ba/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/5.4.4.pdf (accessed January 26, 2021), 2; See: Rail, Road, Urban-Suburban Transport of Passengers and Goods in 2016 (Sarajevo, 2017); 5.1.5., https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=http://fzs.ba/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/5.1.5.pdf (accessed January 26, 2021), 2; See: Rail, Road, Urban-Suburban Transport of Passengers and Goods in 2017 (Sarajevo, 2018); 5.1.5., https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=http://fzs.ba/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/5.1.5.pdf (accessed January 26, 2021), 2; 96
This suggests that the investments in quality made by ŽFBiH and ŽRS in the recent years were successful to regain lost clients despite the suspension of the – quantitatively insignificant – international traffic connections. It may be assumed that the enhancement of the provisional, deteriorated infrastructure since 2004 is responsible for more and longer travel with ŽRS until 2008. In the following years, however, the company apparently lost attractivity to its clients, even though the offered connections stayed the same. The loss of the direct Banja Luka– Belgrade train to Sarajevo does not explain the downturn in 2009, since the route was only altered in December of that year. Possibly, the suspension of ŽFBiH links in 2012 also impacted the passenger numbers in the Republika Srpska negatively. The 2016 low for ŽFBiH can be explained by the temporal closure of the Federation’s most important railway link from Sarajevo to Mostar (and further to Čapljina). From 2017 on, internal connectivity of Bosnia and Herzegovina rose with the re-establishment of that line, with the reconnection of Bihać, with a better connection between Sarajevo and Banja Luka and an additional link to Tuzla. Meanwhile, the future of cross-border railway connections remains vague. An enquiry to the coordinative state-level organisation BHŽJK was answered with the vague statement that the “reinstallation of international passenger lines depends both on the railway companies in Bosnia and Herzegovina and on the Railways in the Republic of Croatia and the Republic of Serbia, in terms of their interest to dedicate financial resources to the realisation of projects of shared interest […].”451 Complementary to the accomplished examination of passenger connections, the last section of Chapter 3.3 will be devoted to the trends in the freight sector. Their similarity in many countries of the region is graphically demonstrated in T.J. Howkins’ work on the transition of South-Eastern European railway networks. One of his figures shows a steep and undamped decline in the freight volume transported by the Yugoslav Railways and their successors for the decade 1985–1995. It is not determined if the downfall began already before, since
See: Rail, Road, Urban-Suburban Transport of Passengers and Goods in 2018 (Sarajevo, 2019); 5.1.5., https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=http://fzs.ba/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/5.1.5.pdf (accessed January 26, 2021), 2; See: Rail, Road, Urban-Suburban Transport of Passengers and Goods in 2019 (Sarajevo, 2020); 5.1.5., https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=http://fzs.ba/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/5.1.5.pdf (accessed January 26, 2021), 2. 451 Marijan Jozinović, E-Mail to Florian Supe. 97
Howkins does not consider data from before the mid-1980s. The graphic most strikingly shows that the descent of the train-transported freight volume of Yugoslavia and its successor states is nearly equal to the one in Romania, which also went through a partly violent transition from socialism to capitalism, but did not dissolve into a full-grown civil war.452 Yugoslavia and Romania feature a nearly synchronistic decline in their railway freight volume, which slows down in 1995 in both spaces (yet the decline does not stop until 1998, the last year the chart depicts). The nearly concurrent development of the graphs that mark two states with such a diverging transformational history leads to the conclusion that the economic crisis of the 1980s, followed by the economic transition in the region, impacted the railway freight sector of Yugoslavia much stronger than the civil war on its soil. The years of war do not even add an extra dent to the graph. However, while Romanian freight transport nearly stabilised between 1995 and 1997, the railway freight volume of the Yugoslav successor states continues to sink. In 1985, Yugoslav Railways carried ca. 80,000 tonnes/km (the highest figure in the region), in the war year 1993 its successors carried ca. 40,000, and in 1998 the figure had shrunk to less than 10,000.453 Besides the downfall of freight haulage in that time in general, the sharp decline is also caused by a transition towards road transport in the region, as Howkins points out.454 Although, contrary to Eastern Bloc countries, there can be no talk of a “quasi-monopoly of freight haulage”455 for the railway in late socialist Yugoslavia, as shown in Chapter 2.4, the shift from rail to road in BiH increased its momentum even more with the destruction of railway infrastructure in the war. Whereas Howkins’ figures suggest that warfare did not additionally curb the declining volume of freight transport in the Yugoslav space as a whole, the impact of war on the figures for Bosnia and Herzegovina is dramatic. No data can be found on the BH-specific development in the pre-war period, but the graph in Figure 2 shows that railway transport shrunk close to zero from 1992 to 1993 and only started its slow recovery in 1997. ŽFBiH experienced a steep incline of tonne-kilometres (tkm) from 2003 to 2005, which is possibly related to the fact that the North-South corridor Vc was made fully traversable with the opening of the railway border
452 See: Howkins, “Changing hegemonies and new external pressures: South East European railway networks in transition,”: 189, Fig.1. 453 See: ibid., 189., Fig.1. 454 See: ibid. 455 See: ibid. 98
at Šamac in 2002. After that period of revival, the transport volume could not be further sustainably increased. Both ŽFBiH and – on a much lower level – ŽRS stagnated at their respective 2005 levels in 2019.
The development of railway freight transport in BiH in million tonne-kilometres per year 1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0
2005 2013 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
ŽFBiH freight transport in tkm ŽRS freight transport in tkm
Figure 2456
456 The ŽFBiH data for 1992–2013 is retrieved from the ŽFBiH website (tkm are self-calculated out of total tonnes carried and average distance covered by one tonne), the data for 2014–2019 is taken from bulletins of the statistic agency of the FBiH. Since diverging figures are indicated for the years 2014 and 2015 (the two years which are covered by both sources), the accuracy of the data is questionable. For 1992, the ŽFBiH data probably refers to the whole railway system in BiH; for 1993–2001 – before the merger of Željeznice BiH and Željeznice Herceg-Bosna – it is unclear if the data considers the freight volume of both companies. The ŽRS data is retrieved from statistic bulletins issued by the RS which do not cover the period before 2004. See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, “Robni Prijevoz: Vrste I Obim Prijevoza Po Godinama,”, https://www.zfbh.ba/cargo/vrste-i-obim-prijevoza/ (accessed January 20, 2021); See: Transport of passengers and goods in 2014, 2; See: Rail transport of passengers and Goods, 1st quarter 2015, 2; See: Rail transport of passengers and Goods, 2nd quarter 2015, 2; See: Rail transport of passengers and Goods, 3rd quarter 2015, 2; See: Rail transport of passengers and goods, 4th quarter 2015, 2; See: Rail, road, urban-suburban transport of passengers and goods in 2016, 2; See: Rail, road, urban-suburban transport of passengers and goods in 2017, 2; See: Rail, road, urban-suburban transport of passengers and goods in 2018, 2; See: Rail, road, urban-suburban transport of passengers and goods in 2019, 2; See: Transport and Communications, 21; See: Transport and Communications, 20; See: Transport and Communications, 17 See: Transport and Communications, 17; See: Transport and Communications, 17; See: Transport and Communications, 17. 99
3.4. Political, economic and societal frame conditions
So far, the development of railway connectivity of Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1996 has been analysed with regard to reconstruction, modernisation and usage of routes and in consideration of the basic historic and spatial conditions on the ground. In this final part of Chapter 3, complementary information on the (geo)political, (geo)economic and societal frame conditions of the railway development shall be offered. Early after the demise of socialism around 1990, the European Union started its engagement in the transport sector of Eastern and South-Eastern European countries.457 Although it was not the primary actor in creating the system of Pan-European transport corridors, it soon took over the leading role in transport integration from the intergovernmental ECMT458 and furthered the ideas of the merely coordinative forum with its financial and normative power. In 1996, the EU established a “Transport Infrastructure Needs Assessment” (TINA) secretariat “to identify transport investment projects in the accession countries and develop a methodology to determine investment priorities.”459 Unlike in the ECMT meetings in Crete and Helsinki, only EU member states and the candidate countries of that time participated in the TINA process, which means that Slovenia was the only ex-Yugoslav republic involved. In 1998, TINA accepted the plans for the Helsinki corridor network, and in 1999 the EU secretariat submitted its final report.460 Since the Union is a major financier of the Bosnian Herzegovinian railway system, a closer look on its common transport policy is required. Exceeding the regionally limited frame of the PETC and TINA, the EU has adopted different plans for a large-scale Trans-European Transport
457 See: Howkins, “Changing hegemonies and new external pressures: South East European railway networks in transition,”: 191. 458 The EU already acted as a stakeholder in the ECMT meetings of the 1990s. In a 1999 report, Günter Lüttge from the EU Committee on Transport and Tourism stated that “during the 1990s, the European Parliament has played a leading role in the organisation of PanEuropean Transport Conferences”. Günter Lüttge, “Report on the Follow-up to the Helsinki Conference on a Pan-European Transport Policy,” (EU Committee on Transport and Tourism, 1999/02/17), https://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+REPORT+A4- 1999-0057+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN (accessed February 2, 2021), B Explanatory Statement. 459 Howkins, “Changing hegemonies and new external pressures: South East European railway networks in transition,”: 192. 460 See: ibid. 100
Network (TEN-T) since the 1990s,461 the current basis of which is a regulation from 2013.462 Like the Helsinki system created by ECMT and adopted by TINA, the TEN-T has an intermodal corridor approach and pursues similar goals – “co-ordination, […] cohesion and complementarity of infrastructure investment”463 – but it is not limited on the linkage between Central and Eastern Europe and puts the emphasis on partly different routes also in that region. In the TEN-T plans for transport infrastructural modernisation and expansion, ten corridors represent the “core network”, which is supplemented by a “comprehensive network”. The provided information on the status of the Western Balkan countries in this system, however, is contradictory. In some maps, the core network of corridors is limited to EU countries,464 while others show routes that are marked as part of the core scheme in (potential) future EU member states as well.465 It is reasonable to assume that the extension to “specific third countries”466 was part of the plan’s amendments adopted between 2016 and 2019, but that the interactive map on the Commission’s TEN-T web page still shows the state of 2013.467 The following paragraph relates to a map that was already part of the 2013 regulation, but was apparently amended since. In line with the Helsinki corridors, the Bosnian Herzegovinian Šamac–Sarajevo–Metković railway communication is part of the core network of the TEN-T. In Slavonia and South- Western Hungary, however, the further Vc route to Budapest only bears the status of a comprehensive line in the EU plan, whereas the TEN-T core network expands further to Belgrade and Zagreb (Helsinki corridor X). The Dalmatian section Metković–Ploče is marked as comprehensive as well. The further “comprehensive” BH railway routes mentioned in the EU
461 See: Grzegorz Zajac, “Contemporary Aspects of European Transport Policy,” Journal of International Trade, Logistics and Law 1, no. 1 (2015): 13, http://jital.org/index.php/jital/article/view/27/pdf_1 (accessed January 7, 2021). 462 See: European Commission, “Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T),”, https://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes/infrastructure/ten-t_en (accessed April 1, 2021). 463 Szymon Wiśniewski, “The Accessibility of Poland’s Space to the Trans-European Transport Network,” Miscellanea Geographica - Regional Studies on Development 21, no. 3 (2017): 96. 464 See: European Commission, “Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T),”. 465 See: European Commission, “Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T). Core Network Corridors on the TEN- T. Annex III - VOL 31/33,”, https://ec.europa.eu/transport/infrastructure/tentec/tentec- portal/site/maps_upload/annexes/annex3/Annex%20III%20-%20VOL%2031.pdf (accessed January 7, 2021). 466 See: European Commission, “Trans-European Transport Netork (TEN-T): Core Netowrk Corridors. Annex III,”, https://ec.europa.eu/transport/infrastructure/tentec/tentec-portal/site/en/maps.html (accessed January 8, 2021). 467 See: European Commission, “European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations: Bosnia and Herzegovina,”, https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/countries/detailed-country- information/bosnia-herzegovina_en (accessed January 4, 2021). 101
document are the section Brčko–Šićki Brod (a railway junction near Tuzla) and the West-East connection Novi Grad–Banja Luka–Doboj–Tuzla–Zvornik, which is only extended eastwards to Belgrade in the plan. The lack of aspired connectivity in the Bosnian North-West is therefore conspicuous. Both the former Unska pruga (Zagreb–Bihać–Knin) and the existing Zagreb–Novi Grad route are omitted in the plan, making the latter town a dead end of the railway system in BiH.468 In contrast to this amended map, in the map that was annexed to the original regulation in 2013, all charted BH railway lines including the one on the Vc corridor had the lower status of comprehensive lines. Moreover, the West-East communication covered only the Banja Luka–Tuzla part and did not even show the existing sections Novi Grad–Banja Luka and Tuzla–Zvornik.469 Subsequently, TEN-T in the region had been adjusted since 2013 to include more parts of the BH railway network and envisages Šamac as the pivotal border crossing of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the only one in the core network. While the re- establishment of the Una line is apparently not prioritised by the EU, it seems curious that the route Sarajevo–Banja Luka–Zagreb with the existing border passing at Dobrljin did not even aquire the state of a comprehensive line. Possibly, the section between Novi Grad and Sunja was unintentionally omitted by the draughtspeople, which could be explained by the fact that most of the track shares its course with a border line. The discussed map is also included in the Framework Transport Strategy of Bosnia and Herzegovina for the years 2015–2030 that was probably adopted in 2016.470 The pursuit of the Trans-European Transport Network in the EU’s neighbourhood is an example of the normative approach of the Union, the background of which is explained by Ion Stancu and his colleagues in the following quote.
“Transport is a key element in the EU's cooperation with neighbouring countries and its efforts to promote the conditions for sustainable economic growth, trade and cultural exchange. Transport is also one of the areas where the EU works to facilitate the spread of its own internal market principles and rules abroad.”471
468 See: European Commission, “Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T). Core network corridors on the TEN- T. Annex III - VOL 31/33,”, 1. 469 See: European Parliament and European Council, “Regulation (EU) No 1315/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 December 2013 on Union Guidelines for the Development of the Trans-European Transport Network and Repealing Decision No 661/2010/EU Text with EEA Relevance,”, https://eur- lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32013R1315 (accessed January 7, 2021), Table 13.3. 470 See: [Ministarstvo komunikacija i prometa BiH], “Okvirna strategija prometa Bosne i Hercegovine,”, 42. The Strategy neither indicates a publication date nor an institution which published it. The year 2016 can be determined by the fact that “short term plans” relate to the years 2016-2020. See: 9. 471 Stancu, Varzaru and Lazarescu, “Helsinki Corridors: Ways of European Expansion and Development,”: 82. 102
Already since the 1990s, the EU conditions its funding in the railway sector of South-Eastern Europe on several principles. Howkins names the “[r]eorganisation of rail management structures to separate infrastructure from operation[, p]roposals to simplify and speed up cross-border formalities [and r]eduction in over-manning” as characteristic stipulations in such contracts.472 In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the first prerequisite is met by both ŽRS and ŽFBiH who lead discrete divisions for infrastructure and operation according to the organisational scheme on their websites.473 In their efforts to overcome inefficient overmanning, however, the European Union and other institutions like the World Bank had less success. Tihomir Dakić, the transport coordinator from the NGO “Center for Environment” in Banja Luka, explains that the small number of sectors that remained in public ownership after the privatisation wave in the 1990s – forests, water supply, parts of the energy sector and the railway companies474 – are closely affiliated with the ruling parties. Employees of the public companies act as an important factor in elections to uphold the status quo; in return, the government secures economically inefficient jobs. According to Dakić, this symbiosis is one of the reasons for the excessively rising debts of the ŽRS, which, in turn, make the company amenable to pressure by financiers like the World Bank to privatise their services. The NGO worker speaks of “debt slavery” in that context.475 A nadir was reached in 2017, when a part of the then 3000 ŽRS workers sued the company for not disbursing wages.476 A comprehensive report compiled by ACCOUNT, a BH “anticorruption network of NGOs”, on the mismanagement and the practices of corruption in the railway company of Republika Srpska confirms Dakić’s suggestions. The report from 2019 states that the ŽRS had accumulated losses of €61 million and liabilities of €196 million according to “the last official numbers”.477 Moreover, the ACCOUNT investigators give a dire prospect for quick
472 Howkins, “Changing hegemonies and new external pressures: South East European railway networks in transition,”: 191. 473 See: Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., “Kompanija: O Nama,”, https://www.zrs- rs.com/index.php/kompanija/o-nama (accessed February 3, 2021); See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, “O Nama: Menadžment Kompanije,”, https://www.zfbh.ba/o-nama/menadzment-kompanije/ (accessed February 2, 2021). 474 See: Tihomir Dakić and Dragan Kabić, interview by Florian Supe, January 20, 2021, Online, 02:00 min. 475 See: ibid., 18:50 min. 476 See: balkans.aljazeera.net, “Željeznice RS: Tužbe Radnika I Pad Broja Putnika,”, July 20, 2017, https://balkans.aljazeera.net/videos/2017/07/20/zeljeznice-rs-tuzbe-radnika-i-pad-broja-putnika (accessed February 10, 2021). 477 See: Frontal, “Narodu Milionski Dugovi, Direktorima I Političarima Privilegije,”, https://www.frontal.ba/novost/95264/narodu-milionski-dugovi-direktorima-i-politicarima-privilegije (accessed 103
improvements for railway customers. “When the strategic company had been driven to the brink of bankruptcy, restructuring started with the help of a World Bank credit”478 of €51.3 million in December 2017, that has to be paid back by the majority shareholder RS within a maturity period of 32 years.479 The report draws attention to the fact that the credit will serve to cover the debts, pay outstanding wages and reorganise the ŽRS, which means that none of it is dedicated to the rehabilitation of the railway tracks or a modernisation of the outdated rolling stock.480 However, in December 2017, ŽRS also signed a contract with a Chinese company to modernise the railway track between Banja Luka and the border at Dobrljin.481 No further information can be found about the procedure or financing of that project. In spring 2020, a media outlet reported that ŽRS had generated positive results in 2018 and 2019 for the first time after posting constant losses for years,482 which might be an indicator that the restructuring activities conditioned by the World Bank already bore fruit. The debt of the Federation’ railway company, on the other hand, had amounted to €95.6 million in 2015, which the director general owes to the failure of the FBiH government to offer the financial aid stipulated in the “Law about the financial consolidation of ŽFBiH”.483 According to a press release by the company, 2015 was the turning point since when the liabilities have been successively acquitted.484 Concurrent with the longstanding attempts to alleviate the vicious debt circle of the companies, the spatial setting of Bosnia and Herzegovina changed. Probably the most important shift in that regard was the admission of BiH’s neighbour Croatia to the European
February 5, 2021). In the report, the figures are given in the BH currency BAM. The cited sums are converted to EUR with the exchange rate indicated by the website finanzen.net for January 2019 (1 BAM = 0.5113 EUR) and rounded. 478 Ibid. 479 See: World Bank, “Republika Srpska Railways Restructuring Project,”, https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/loans-credits/2017/12/07/republika-srpska-railways-restructuring- project (accessed February 4, 2021). 480 See: Frontal, “Narodu milionski dugovi, direktorima i političarima privilegije,”. 481 See: Railway Gazette International, “Chinese Company to Upgrade Republika Srpska Railway,”, December 21, 2017, https://www.railwaygazette.com/infrastructure/chinese-company-to-upgrade-republika-srpska- railway/45695.article (accessed February 11, 2021). 482 See: Srna, “Željeznice: Gubitak U Prvom Kvartalu 5,28 Miliona KM, Problem Dugovi Partnera,” rtrs.tv, May 12, 2020, https://lat.rtrs.tv/vijesti/vijest.php?id=383412 (accessed February 5, 2021). 483 See: Darko Omeragić, “Javna I Privatna Preduzeća U Minusu Od 1,8 Milijardi KM: Sve Je Isto Samo Dugovi Rastu,” Dani, October 2, 2015, https://bhdani.oslobodjenje.ba/bhdani/arhiva/sve-je-isto-samo-dugovi-rastu (accessed February 5, 2021). 484 See: Nurko Spahić, “ŽFBiH O Uplati Obaveza Prema Javnim Fondovima,”, https://www.zfbh.ba/en/tag/zakon- o-finansijskoj-konsolidaciji/ (accessed February 5, 2021). 104
Union in July 2013.485 With this enlargement of the EU space to the Bosnian Herzegovinian border, the European orientation that had been economically (and with limitations also politically) pursued by all newly independent countries in the region gained even more importance. Although Croatia is not yet a full member of the visa-free Schengen area,486 Zagreb’s EU integration turned the boundaries with BiH into an external EU border, which had ambiguous effects on the spatial reintegration between the two countries. On the one hand, visa-free travel to the Schengen area was introduced for all BH citizens in possession of a biometric passport already in December 2010 as an important step towards EU membership,487 and the visa-free regime that had existed between BiH and Croatia stayed in place for holders of such a document also after Croatia’s EU admission.488 On the other hand, however, the relevance of the external EU border rose in light of the refugee and migrant pushbacks from Croatia to BiH in the aftermath of the increased influx of asylum seekers to Europe in 2015 and 2016.489 The border between BiH and Croatia first lost its (economic) significance in 1879, when Bosnia and Herzegovina was incorporated in the customs area of the Habsburg monarchy.490 Over the next century, despite major political changes, the two spaces were never divided by an international border and could unimpededly increase their economic interdependence. Subsequently, the intricate path towards (transport) reconnection that started with the signing of the Dayton Agreement is informed by both the drastic disintegration in the Yugoslav Wars and the experience of the 113 years of coalescence that preceded it. In June 2015, the EU integration process of Bosnia and Herzegovina cleared an important hurdle with the entry into force of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement.491
485 See: Politico, “Croatia Joins the EU: How Europe’s Papers See Croatia’s Accession to the EU,”, July 1, 2013, https://www.politico.eu/article/croatia-joins-the-eu/. 486 See: Katrin Abele, “Kroatien Erfüllt Alle Bedingungen Für Beitritt Zum Schengen-Raum,”, https://ec.europa.eu/germany/news/20191022-kroatien_de (accessed January 8, 2021). 487 See: European Commission, “European Neighbourhood Policy And Enlargement Negotiations,”. 488 See: Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of Croatia, “Visa Requirements Overview,”, http://www.mvep.hr/en/consular-information/visas/visa-requirements-overview/bosnia-and- herzegovina,34.html#p (accessed January 27, 2021) 489 See: Danijel Kovačević, “On Bosnia’s Border with Croatia, Tensions Build over Migrants, Refugees,” Balkan Insight, August 19, 2020, https://balkaninsight.com/2020/08/19/on-bosnias-border-with-croatia-tensions-build- over-migrants-refugees/ (accessed January 27, 2021). 490 See: Kurt Wessely, “Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung von Bosnien-Herzegowina,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, 532–33. 491 The SSA was signed already in June 2008, but was frozen after its ratification in 2011, since BiH had not fulfilled all of its obligations. See: European Commission, “European Neighbourhood Policy And Enlargement Negotiations,”; radio.net, “Press: Bosnia-EU Relations Put on Hold,” tportal.hr, April 26, 2011, 105
In September 2017, BiH signed as the last of the six Western Balkan countries a Transport Community Agreement with the European Union which releases investments of €250 million to the BH transport system.492 Two months earlier, the leadership of the Republika Srpska had produced a temporary blockade with its insistence on a rotating system in the governance of the contract which would have given the entities the same powers that were intended for the state level institutions. That weakening of the BH state as a whole was refused by both the EU and the BH Council of Ministers.493 The agreement establishes a transport community in the Western Balkan region which shall integrate the transport markets of the six (potential) candidate countries into the EU transport market and includes the areas of “technical standards, interoperability, safety, security, traffic management, social policy, public procurement and environment […].494 The Transport Community, which “applies in the field of road, rail, inland waterway and maritime transport”,495 is heralded by a Deutsche Welle journalist as a chance to modernise railway routes and facilitate better collaboration between the railway systems in the Western Balkan region.496 Compliance with the numerous EU regulations, directives and Commission decisions listed in Annex 1.2 of the treaty would indeed force a reorganisation of the ineffective and entity-wise separated railway system of BiH.497 The “single system of transport and communication” in the Western Balkans, however, which the economist Zoran Pavlović cited in the Deutsche Welle article deems “necessary”,498 shall be established by common rules and standards and does not encompass the merger of ŽFBiH and ŽRS to a single company. With its stipulation on the successive liberalisation in passenger transport and non-discrimination,499 the treaty rather seeks to improve the access of multiple competitive transport providers to the Western Balkan space. Pavlović and a consulting agent who is also quoted in the article
https://web.archive.org/web/20111002094359/http://daily.tportal.hr/124423/Press-Bosnia-EU-relations-put- on-hold.html (accessed January 4, 2021). 492 See: balkans.aljazeera.net, “Potpisan Ugovor O Transportnoj Zajednici Između BiH I EU-a,”, September 18, 2017, https://balkans.aljazeera.net/news/balkan/2017/9/18/potpisan-ugovor-o-transportnoj-zajednici-izmedu- bih-i-eu (accessed January 20, 2021). 493 See: Dragan Maksimović, “Prolazi Voz Za BiH?,” dw.com, July 27, 2017, https://www.dw.com/sr/prolazi-voz- za-bih/a-39857156 (accessed January 20, 2021). 494 “Treaty Establishing the Transport Community,” Official Journal of the European Union, L 278/3 (2017): Art.1/1, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:22017A1027(01)&from=EN (accessed February 8, 2021). 495 European Commission, “Transport Community,”. 496 See: Maksimović, “Prolazi voz za BiH?,”. 497 See: “Treaty establishing the Transport Community,”: Annex 1.2. 498 See: Maksimović, “Prolazi voz za BiH?,”. 499 See: “Treaty establishing the Transport Community,”: Art.11/1. 106
point out the importance of the agreement for the long-term financing, the infrastructural modernisation and the payment of the enormous debts in the Bosnian Herzegovinian railway sector. At the same time, an informal ŽRS source doubted that the given sum would lead to much progress, given the low point of departure.500 Except for the requirements for reorganisation, however, the transport community does not bring any advantage to the BH railway sector. The four authorised projects to be financed with the €250 million investment for Bosnia and Herzegovina comprised four motorway sections and a Sava port, leaving out the railway system completely.501 According to Tihomir Dakić, the self-governance principle that the EU applies in its investment policy in the region is abused by BH politicians to meet their personal interest and a political agenda that contradicts the integrational principles of the European Union. As an example, he states that the EU supports the prioritisation of the motorway in the Vc corridor, while the leader of the Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, tries to block it until he receives funding for his alternative project, a West-East motorway from the RS to Serbia (Novi Grad–Banja Luka– Bijeljina–Belgrade).502 Additionally, Dakić explains the preference for road over rail infrastructure through better opportunities for corruption. He suggests that the construction of new, long-winded motorways is, beside strategic considerations to make the Republika Srpska traffic-wise as independent from the Federation as possible, a profitable illegal business model featuring the following strategy: a group of profiteers receives first-hand information that a motorway will be built on a certain route, then the individuals acquire cheap estate and erect low-priced houses on it. Some years later, when the aligning of the motorway is publicly discussed, the government officially expropriates the owners and gives them a compensation much higher than their original investments. The NGO worker assumes that the railway sector does not offer many options for that, as completely new railway routes are rare, and investment is mostly made in the modernisation of existing tracks.503 The European Union and the World Bank, however, are not the only investors in the BH transport market. Chinese companies have concluded preliminary agreements about the construction of three motorway sections in the RS within the scope of China’s massive
500 See: Maksimović, “Prolazi voz za BiH?,”. 501 See: balkans.aljazeera.net, “Potpisan Ugovor o Transportnoj zajednici između BiH i EU-a,”. 502 See: Tihomir Dakić and Dragan Kabić, interview by Florian Supe, 10:30-14:00 min. 503 See: ibid., 14:50 min. 107
infrastructure investment strategy Silk Road Economic Belt between 2012 and 2015.504 Dakić mentions that the contract for the Novi Grad–Banja Luka section has been signed already, including the liability of the Republika Srpska for the yield of the project. Yet, lately the entity government prioritises the Banja Luka–Bijeljina–Belgrade motorway section together with the gas pipeline “South stream” coming from Turkey,505 which is confirmed by a media report citing the transport minister of the RS.506 Only in 2018, BiH and Serbia had agreed on Turkish investment for a motorway from Sarajevo to Belgrade; what the new plans in the Republika Srpska mean for the priority of that project is unclear. The simultaneous planning of many different large-scale transport projects, especially in the Serb-dominated entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, calls into question the existence of a goal- oriented and economically reasonable strategy in the infrastructural sector of the country and supports Dakić’s critique. Given the dire financial situation of the entities and the fact that only 102 km had been completed of the 338 km long motorway on the Vc corridor since physical work started in 2001,507 it is questionable which projects can be concluded in the foreseeable future. The current investment policy featuring the extensive commencement of new projects before the old ones are finished bears resemblance to the decentralised “new economic policy” phase in socialist Yugoslavia, which brought the state to the brink of bankruptcy. The only other completed motorway sections in BiH are located in the North of the Republika Srpska, one from Banja Luka to (Bosanska) Gradiška at the border with Croatia (opened for traffic in 2011)508 and one covering most of the route between Banja Luka and Doboj (opened in 2018).509
504 See: Ljiljana Stević and Miloš Grujić, “Bosna I Hercegovina Na Novom Putu Svile: Strategija, Stanje, Perspektive I Pozicioniranje U Skladu Sa Novom Kineskom Strategijom U Zemljama CIE,” Politeia - Naucni casopis Fakulteta politickih nauka u Banjoj Luci za društvena pitanja, no. 10 (2015): 74. 505 See: Tihomir Dakić and Dragan Kabić, interview by Florian Supe, 30:00-32:30 min. 506 See: biznisinfo.ba, “Popović: Autoput Banja Luka – Beograd Ključni Prioritet,”, January 4, 2021, https://www.biznisinfo.ba/popovic-autoput-banja-luka-beograd-kljucni-prioritet/ (accessed February 8, 2021). 507 See: Dženana Karabegović, “Za Dvije Decenije Izgrađeno Tek 102 Kilometara Autoputa U BiH,” slobodnaevropa.org, October 16, 2019, https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/autoput-bih-20-godina-120- kilometara-puta/30219923.html (accessed February 8, 2021). The title of the article wrongly indicates that 102 km is the total length of all motorways in BiH, whereas the text makes clear that the figure relates only to the FBiH. 508 See: vijesti.ba, “Ovog Mjeseca Otvaranje Autoputa B. Luka - Bos. Gradiška,”, November 13, 2011, https://vijesti.ba/clanak/59163/ovog-mjeseca-otvaranje-autoputa-b-luka-bos-gradiska (accessed February 10, 2021). 509 See: Uroš Vukić, “Svečano Otvorena Posljednja Dionica, Autoput "9. Januar" Kompletan,” nezavisne.com, October 2, 2018, https://www.nezavisne.com/ekonomija/privreda/Svecano-otvaranje-posljednje-dionice- autoput-9-januar-kompletan/500498 (accessed February 10, 2021). 108
In autumn 2020, the EU presented a new investment plan for the Western Balkan countries worth €9 billion. Of the ten projects that BiH submitted for its share of the grant, two relate to energy supply, five concern the construction of new road infrastructure, and three pertain to the railway system. The three railway projects are a completely new 50 km link between Vareš and Banovići that would offer a more direct connection between Sarajevo and the North-East of BiH; the electrification of the Doboj–Tuzla–Zvornik line; and the modernisation of the railway route in the Northern part of the Vc corridor, between the border at Šamac and the entity border at Rječica.510 The latter undertaking seems the most concrete, since negotiations between BiH and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development about a credit for the rehabilitation of that section were started already in spring 2020.511 Since the Southern part between Sarajevo and Čapljina had been modernised already in 2016,512 the realisation of the investment plan would leave only the central part of Vc for a modernisation that would enable the speed of trains to be increased. The electrification between Doboj and Zvornik, on the other hand, would bring Bosnia and Herzegovina one step closer to a strong and continuous West-East connection and, given the completed modernisation of the Brasina–Šabac line on the Serbian side,513 offer a fast and direct railway connection from Banja Luka to Belgrade. Moreover, with the modernisation of the whole track Dobrljin–Banja Luka–Doboj and the (theoretical) construction of two new sections in central Croatia and Western Serbia, the realisation of the old plan for a Southern mainline from the Upper Adriatic via BiH to Southern Serbia could be realised.514 Beside the abovementioned projects that were developed in expectation of concrete foreign investment, the BH Framework Transport Strategy from 2016 also includes a “supplement to the area plan of RS 2025” which shows completely new railway routes that would considerably raise the connectivity of Republika Srpska and make the entity more independent from the
510 See: Amela Lončarić, “EU Ulaže Devet Milijardi Eura U Region: Gdje Je Tu BiH,” oslobođenje.ba, November 25, 2020, https://www.oslobodjenje.ba/vijesti/ekonomija/eu-ulaze-devet-milijardi-eura-u-region-gdje-je-tu-bih- 605168 (accessed February 9, 2021). 511 See: akta.ba, “Za Remont Pruge Šamac - Doboj - Rječica 40 Miliona Eura,”, October 2, 2020, https://www.akta.ba/investicije/za-remont-pruge-samac-doboj-rjecica-40-miliona-eura/124343 (accessed February 9, 2021). 512 See: Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, “BH vozom ponovo prema jugu,”. 513 See: polazak.rs, “Železnički red vožnje 2018/2019,”. 514 Those sections, are, as Dokić stated in 1990, Glina–Novi Grad in Croatia (50 km) and Lipnica–Valjevo in Serbia (68 km). Additionally, however, the rehabilitation of the track between Karlovac and Glina would be required, a line that was never brought back into use after its destruction in the Yugoslav dissolution war. See: Dokić, “Saobraćajno-ekonomski značaj južne železničke magistrale Ljubljana-Karlovac-Glina-B.Novi-Doboj-Zvornik- Valjevo-Požega-Stalać,”: 328. 109
Federation. One of the lines runs in the North-East close to the Sava, from Šamac via Brčko District and Bijeljina to Serbia. The most expansive new project in the area plan is a second North-South railway route parallel to Vc, running through the until today unconnected Eastern part of Republika Srpska. According to the map, it would be linked to Tuzla in the North and Čapljina in the South, but not to Sarajevo in the centre. Since the map pictures the area plan of Republika Srpska, it does not include any new railway tracks in the Federation, except for the short connecting line to the East in Southern Herzegovina.515 As no information on the progress of these plans was found online, it is unlikely that they will be implemented in the foreseeable future. The discussed projects and investment plans show that the railway was not completely neglected in the Bosnian Herzegovinian infrastructural planning of recent years, but that road infrastructure is clearly prioritised. In the Republika Srpska, motorway sections have been completed or are to be constructed with a vigour that – besides all delays and accusations of corruption – palpably outruns the political commitment for a modernisation of the railway scheme. Contrary to the Public Motorway Company of the RS that was only founded in 2006,516 ŽRS struggle with bad debt that has to be paid off by credits before the outdated infrastructure can be upgraded. In the FBiH, on the other hand, an assessment on the political prioritisation of a transport mode is less manifest. The last years showed an investment leap in the railway infrastructure and rolling stock with the successful modernisation of the line from Sarajevo to the South, the electrification of the track in the Krajina and the acquisition of new trains. In addition, the ŽFBiH was already able to start paying off its debts in 2015, two years before ŽRS, while the construction of the motorway in the Vc corridor that runs mostly through the Federation proceeds, besides all prioritisation, slowly. Yet, as the allocation of the Transport Community investment and the additional EU investment from 2020 show, the section between Vareš and Banovići is the only contemplated investment in a new railway track, whereas all the large-scale investments in road infrastructure pertain to the construction of completely new high-ranking road types like motorways and “brze ceste” (fast roads).517 Although the compilation of a reliable list indicating the total sum invested and bound to be invested in Bosnian Herzegovinian road and rail infrastructure, respectively,
515 See: [Ministarstvo komunikacija i prometa BiH], “Okvirna strategija prometa Bosne i Hercegovine,”, 48. 516 See: Autoputevi RS, “About Us,”, https://autoputevirs.com/en/onama-2/ (accessed February 15, 2021). 517 See: Lončarić, “EU ulaže devet milijardi eura u region: Gdje je tu BiH,”; See: balkans.aljazeera.net, “Potpisan Ugovor o Transportnoj zajednici između BiH i EU-a,”. 110
would go beyond the scope of this thesis, based on the sources examined on the previous pages it seems legitimate to assume that the former outruns the latter by far, at least in the last decade. A prioritisation of road investment over railway investment, however, will consolidate the low significance of the latter transport mode. The transport bulletin of the Republika Srpska indicates that in 2019, only 4.2% of passenger kilometres in the entity were travelled by rail, while 95.8% fell upon road.518 In the “structure” of the freight sector in the same year, which probably relates to the total amount of transported goods, ŽRS held the lion’s share of 60.8%, as opposed to 39.2% of goods transported on the road. This favourable statistic for the railway, however, gets reversed when the tonne kilometres are taken into consideration. Here, the railway is accountable for only 27% of goods haulage. 519 In the FBiH, the railway held in 2019 with 2.8% an even smaller share of travelled passenger kilometres, while train transport accounted for 23% of tonne kilometres in the goods sector.520 To sum up, the railway in BiH could preserve its role as a relevant stakeholder in the transport of goods market but has, despite rising absolute numbers of passengers in the last years, nearly no significance for the mobility of people in relative terms. This is manifest in the fact that the figures for passenger road transport in the abovementioned statistics do not even include private passenger cars.521 The Balkan Barometer Survey already cited in the introduction confirms the marginal role of ŽRS and ŽFBiH for the BH population. Facing the question “Which mode of transport did you most often use when travelling outside of your place of residence in the past 12 months?”, over the years from 2015 to 2020, on average 65% of respondents chose automobile and 25% bus. The share of respondents who indicated the railway as their most-used transport mode was always zero, except for 1% in 2015.522 Considering this enormous disparity, the EU-proclaimed concept of transport intermodality – with parallel investment in road and railway infrastructure – cannot deliver the European Commission’s goal “to support a green […] transition”523 in the Western Balkans. Already in
518 See: Transport and Communications, 11. 519 See: ibid., 13. 520 See: Rail, road, urban-suburban transport of passengers and goods in 2019, 2. 521 See: Transport and Communications, 7; See: Rail, road, urban-suburban transport of passengers and goods in 2019, 3. 522 See: Regional Cooperation Council, “Balkan Public Barometer,”. 523 See: European Commission, “Western Balkans Investment Framework: Country Summary Bosnia and Herzegovina,”, https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood- enlargement/sites/default/files/country_summary_bosnia_and_herzegovina.pdf (accessed February 15, 2021). 111
2012, Đuro Marić included the following statement on transport modes in his article on the future of corridor Vc.
“It is necessary to make a partial transfer from road to some other transport mode, primarily on the railway one [sic], which will directly affect reduction of truck transport of goods, and thus will increase road safety and decrease adverse environmental impact in the areas of the main transport routes.”524
With the prioritisation of massive investment in motorways and fast roads over investment in the railway infrastructure, the competitiveness of road transport will further increase to the detriment of the railway sector. Even if, as Dakić expects, investment will concentrate on the railway, once all envisaged motorways are completed,525 which might facilitate further growth of ŽRS and ŽFBiH in absolute numbers, it is the relative share of the railway in the Bosnian
Herzegovinian transport market that matters in light of the global struggle to reduce CO2 emissions. The delayed emulation of the dense central European freeway scheme in BiH contradicts the goal of a “green transition”, which necessitates an immediate turnaround in the transport sector and a large-scale transport shift from road to rail.526 Apart from the negative consequences for climate change mitigation, demand-driven car-centred transport planning has also other massive flaws which shall be presented in Chapter 4. After the accomplished overview of the Bosnian Herzegovinian transport investment policy and their spatial and political frame conditions, the final pages of this section will be dedicated to the reasons why the railway has lost nearly all of its significance in the passenger sector compared to late socialist Yugoslavia. As shown in sections 2.4 and 3.3, the downturn of rail transport in general began already in the decades before the Bosnian War. It was not unique to the SR BiH or the SFRY, but rather a phenomenon that occurred in all countries with a dynamically rising motorisation rate. However, while freight transport (in tkm) in Yugoslavia and its successor states suffered a
524 Marić, “Corridor Vc as a factor of integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina into the European Union,”: 96. 525 See: Tihomir Dakić and Dragan Kabić, interview by Florian Supe, 34. 526 Although a timely complete transition of freight transport from road to rail is deemed unfeasible for many countries by Julian Torres de Miranda Pinto and his colleagues „due to either a lack of available railway infrastructure or high investment costs […]”, they agree that road-rail intermodal operations are only a „transitional alternative“ to lower emissions. Torres de Miranda Pinto, Julian et al., “Road-Rail Intermodal Freight Transport as a Strategy for Climatechange Mitigation,” Environmental Development 25 (2018): 100, 109, https://bit.ly/3rYRVwQ (accessed February 16, 2021). If, like in Bosnia and Herzegovina, high scale road infrastructure needs to be built from scratch as well, the financial argument for investing in intermodality instead of prioritising railway over road investment is void. 112
tremendous decline of 90% between 1985 and 1998, the decrease of passenger kilometres in the same period was with 70% considerably smaller according to Howkins’ chart. Another difference is that the years of the Yugoslav dissolution wars are clearly visible in the graph as the only five-year period with a severe drop of travelled kilometres, while the sharp downturn of freight haulage had already begun before.527 One possible explanation why passenger transport did not decrease as much in the 1980s and 90s as freight transport is that the point of departure in 1985 was much lower, since the shift from travel by rail to travel by road had begun already two decades earlier, with the successive mass motorisation since the 1960s. However, while freight haulage by rail recovered in BiH, once the basic infrastructural necessities were reinstalled,528 passenger transport did not. ŽRS and ŽFBiH reports of a steady incline in passenger numbers from recent years (before the Corona pandemic) cannot detract from the fact that the role of the railway in BH passenger mobility is still marginal. To identify possible reasons for the low utilisation of passenger trains, I supplement the discussed facts with the evaluation and temporal comparison by four Bosnian Herzegovinian citizens of different age groups and professional backgrounds. Personal memories of the Herzegovinian journalist Štefica Galić (*1963)529 and assessments from the younger, Banja Luka based NGO workers Tihomir Dakić (*1980) and Dragan Kabić (*1992)530 support the suggestion that in the last decade of socialist Yugoslavia, rail passenger transport was pressured by the increased availability of private cars but was able to retain its societal importance thanks to the good connectivity and the amenities on offer. Galić looks back:
“As I remember from the 1980s, many citizens used the train. I recall that at railway stations you had to run from one end of the platform to the other to catch a seat in the train, as there was always a throng. I often travelled from Čapljina or Mostar to Sarajevo with the fast train `Olympicˊ which was equipped with video and TV devices, it had a buffet and so you would get in a comfortable way, with music or a film to your destination. Also, I often travelled by train to Zagreb or Belgrade. […] We had a car and did not take the train because we had to but because it was easier to travel, also with the beautiful landscape [...] that is unique in Europe. After the war, the tracks and the trains were neglected or nearly destroyed and damaged, but they offered a certain privacy in cabins with fewer seats [...]. Today everything is different.
527 See: Howkins, “Changing hegemonies and new external pressures: South East European railway networks in transition,”: 189. 528 See: Figure 2. 529 See: Wikipedia, “Štefica Galić,”, https://sh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0tefica_Gali%C4%87 (accessed February 17, 2021). 530 See: Centar za životnu sredinu, “O Nama: Naš Tim,”, https://czzs.org/o-nama/nas-tim/ (accessed February 17, 2021). 113
Some years ago, ŽFBiH reconstructed the Mostar–Sarajevo route and bought new `talgoˊ passenger trains.”531
Dakić (D) and his colleague Kabić (K) agree that the image of the Yugoslav Railways was still intact in the 1980s, despite the massive financial problems that seized all segments of society. Since D. was a child and K. not yet born in that decade, their statements cannot be informed by personal memories, but rather draw on the memories of their older peers and the professional knowledge they acquired in their work in the transport section of the “Center for Environment”.
D: “In the 1980s, people started to get Mercedes cars, there were more cars […]” K: “[…] More cars were acquired, fuel was cheap, […] it was normal to drive 10 km in one direction and back just for fun. But clearly, people also used the train, and it was not a sign that you don’t have a car if you did so. […] The [railway] line was relatively straight and the areas alongside were populated, so a mass of people used it nearly every day.” D: “[The railway] was used because it was part of a single network. You could get by train to Belgrade, to Sarajevo, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Skopje. If you liked to travel by train, you had the possibility to take the train. [...] At the end of the 1980s, the political and financial crisis begins, high inflation begins, a lack of fuel, […] but the railway still connected the cities.”532
The mentioning of the “straight” railway lines by Kabić suggests that the tracks connected places more directly than the road infrastructure that existed in late socialist BiH. Since about 70% of BH settlements are located along railway lines,533 the potential for local passenger trains is still given today. University professor of philosophy Miodrag Živanović (*1950) who studied in Sarajevo and lives in Banja Luka,534 agrees that “unlike today, the railways in former Yugoslavia played an important role in society and transport – both in national and international traffic.”535 He establishes the proposition that the ethnic fragmentation of Bosnia and Herzegovina leads to little mobility between the three ethnic spaces of the country not only in the mental, but also in the geographical sense. According to him, one of the reasons why passenger traffic on rail
531 Štefica Galić to Florian Supe. Translated from Bosnian by Florian Supe. 532 Tihomir Dakić and Dragan Kabić, interview by Florian Supe, 3:45 min. Translated from Bosnian by Florian Supe. 533 See: Marić, “Corridor Vc as a factor of integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina into the European Union,”: 93. 534 See: P.E.N. BiH, “Miodrag Živanović,”, http://penbih.ba/clanovi/miodrag-zivanovic/ (accessed February 17, 2021). 535 Miodrag Živanović, E-Mail to Florian Supe. 114
“virtually does not exist” anymore is that any communication with the “other” is perceived unnecessary and undesirable by the three segments of society.536 Živanović does not explicitly state if he refers to a political reluctance to establish better train connections or to the neglect of the existing links by BH residents. The second estimation would not target the examined topic, as it would only explain little mobility in BiH in general, and not the insignificantly low share of railway traffic in the existing passenger transport. Drawing on a study cited by Michel de Certeau, it has been stated in the introduction that (possible) mobility practices are key factors in shaping the human sense of orientation. It can be assumed, therefore, that the (non)existence of transport connections influences the perception of people’s living spaces. If we apply this general assumption to the transport system of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Živanović’s suggestion that ethnic segregation induces low mobility can also be made vice versa. Hence, the hypothesis can be formulated that the low availability of inter-entity and the non-availability of cross-border rail transport in BiH negatively impact the societal integration in the region. With the sources used in this thesis, however, the proof of this hypothesis is not possible. Besides the perpetuated societal segregation, however, Živanović also indicates practical reasons for the low popularity of the railway, namely the outdated rolling stock that is unsuitable for international transport and the deterioration of tracks that allows only for reduced speed.537 While the “operative constraint” of railway speed in BiH was cited with 100 km/h in the Framework Transport Strategy in 2016,538 this figure apparently relates to the technical possibilities for which the infrastructure was initially built. Dakić and Kabić indicate 80-85 km/h as the maximum speed at which trains can travel in BiH in 2021,539 while a media outlet stated 70 km/h in 2017.540 Notably, the article was written after the completed modernisation of the track between Sarajevo and Čapljina. In 2016, before the reopening of that route, a blog cited a ŽFBiH official who stated that the average railway speed in the country amounted to 60 km/h.541 Additionally, Živanović mentions the political control of the
536 See: ibid. 537 See: ibid. 538 See: [Ministarstvo komunikacija i prometa BiH], “Okvirna strategija prometa Bosne i Hercegovine,”, 42. 539 Tihomir Dakić and Dragan Kabić, interview by Florian Supe, 7:55 min. 540 See: M. T., “Voz Banja Luka - Sarajevo: Kupljena 31 karta, talgo otišao, dugovanja ostala,”. 541 See: S.H., “Prosječna Brzina Putničkih Vozova U BiH Je 60 Km/h, a Prosječno Dnevno Kašnjenje 10 Minuta,” klix.ba, March 12, 2016, https://www.klix.ba/vijesti/bih/prosjecna-brzina-putnickih-vozova-u-bih-je-60-km-h-a- prosjecno-dnevno-kasnjenje-10-minuta/160306054 (accessed February 17, 2021) 115
BH railway market as a problem. According to him, “railway companies do not exist as economic subjects” but rather as “powerful political firms.”542 In her assessment of the low railway passenger figures, Galić delivers the same mix of practical and political reasons as the professor from Banja Luka. Hereby, she explicitly suggests that nationalist sentiments would hinder investments in better connectivity.
“I believe that the slowness in relation to the car is the reason why fewer people travel by train because by car they can get quicker where they want, and can stop where they want … Like all other institutions of BiH, the railways are neglected for political reasons and because of the corruption that pervades the whole country. Here, there are still nationalist parties in power who do not want the territories to be connected […], to build walls and separate themselves. Trains connect people and cities rather than separate them. After the war, there was an initiative from BH railways to create a link to Ploče in Croatia, mostly because of tourists [….], but that idea was never carried out. I also think that there was a train to Belgrade once after the war, but the line was not profitable because not many people travelled in that direction, and soon it was suspended. But I know that freight trains communicate in all directions and to all countries and those are profitable. I remember that a person who worked at the railway told me that freight trains are the only profitable ones and that passenger trains are a loss practically.”543
It is an interesting fact that both Galić and Živanović, people who are in principle open to travelling by train, underestimate the railway connectivity that existed or exists in Daytonian BiH. The passenger link to Ploče was in operation for fifteen years, between 1998 and 2013, according to Ignjatović and the ŽRS table.544 In addition, neither of them seems to know that there were direct trains between Sarajevo and Banja Luka (until 2017 the international connection further to Zagreb, and since 2017 a domestic connection) until inter-entity transport was temporarily suspended in the Corona pandemic in 2020. Galić writes “Once there was a Sarajevo–Banja Luka line, but I think today it goes no further than to Doboj”,545 while Živanović states that “only some local lines exist (Banja Luka–Doboj, Banja Luka–Novi Grad, Doboj–Sarajevo, Sarajevo–Mostar, etc.). Other towns do not have railway traffic (Tuzla, Brčko, Bihać).”546 Though the possibility cannot be excluded that both refer to the Corona induced status quo at the time they composed their written comments, the phrasing and the
542 Miodrag Živanović, E-Mail to Florian Supe. 543 Štefica Galić to Florian Supe Translated from Bosnian by Florian Supe. 544 See: Srećko Ignjatović, “Istorija razvoja putničkog saobraćaja uzanog kolosijeka u BiH,”; See: Željeznice Republike Srpske a.d., E-Mail to Florian Supe. 545 Štefica Galić to Florian Supe. Translated from Bosnian by Florian Supe. 546 Miodrag Živanović, E-Mail to Florian Supe. Translated from Bosnian by Florian Supe. 116
context do not make that likely. Hence, their statements show indication that knowledge about existing railway connections may be limited in BiH, which, in turn, would be other evidence for the loss of societal relevance. Dakić and Kabić, who professionally deal with transport in an environmental context, see the slowness of trains in comparison to the car and even to busses as the main reason for the neglect by potential passengers as well. Moreover, they predicate that the insufficient number of daily connections plus unsuitable arrival and departure times would add to the train’s unattractiveness. As an example, Dakić mentions business meetings in Sarajevo which would mostly start in the morning, while the train from Banja Luka arrives in the capital only around 10 and leaves already in the middle of the afternoon, demanding a whole day trip but offering too little time to work in Sarajevo. Next to the bad connectivity in terms of both travel time and number of daily connections, Kabić also criticises the tattiness and dirtiness of the decade old train coaches in the Republika Srpska which makes people avoid this mode of transport. “I only use the local trains because I love trains” the NGO worker states.547 The uncompetitive travel time, the most mentioned disadvantage of the railway in BiH, is also criticised by a 2017 article on the installation of the modern “talgo” train between Banja Luka and Sarajevo. Journalist M.T. commented that the low interest by BH residents was not surprising, given the long travel time of 4 hours 50 minutes.548 In a nutshell, the main reasons stating the low utilisation of railway passenger transport in modern BiH as opposed to the 1980s are the slowness of trains in comparison to road transport and the little number of daily connections, caused by deteriorated tracks and a lack of rolling stock. The single network linking BiH directly to all urban centres of Yugoslavia has also dissolved into separate railway systems that are operated by many different companies with little interest in international traffic. Those three points can be summarised under the term “bad connectivity”. Additionally, the tattiness and untidiness of the mostly overaged coaches seems to be a major determent for potential passengers, especially compared to the modern amenities like TV, buffet etc. that were offered on certain routes in the 1980s according to Galić. Those issues of connectivity and comfort that make the train an irrational and inefficient choice to overcome distances in BiH are mainly caused by the large-scale
547 See: Tihomir Dakić and Dragan Kabić, interview by Florian Supe, 20:30-23:00. Translated from Bosnian by Florian Supe. 548 See: M. T., “Voz Banja Luka - Sarajevo: Kupljena 31 karta, talgo otišao, dugovanja ostala,”. 117
destruction of infrastructure in the war, but also related to the long-lasting inefficient management of the BH railway companies, corruption and the political prioritisation of motorways and fast roads over railway investment.
3.5. Summary
The Yugoslav dissolution war put an abrupt end to the moyenne durée of railway thriving in Bosnia and Herzegovina, after a slow and constant decline had already started in the 1960s. Between 1992 and 1995, the Bosnian Herzegovinian space suffered an enduring fragmentation in the political, economic and societal sense that mirrored the simultaneous dissolution of federal Yugoslavia into ethnically defined republics. The years of armed conflict brought about a comprehensive destruction of connectivity both in the physical sense – with the devastation and transection of transport links – and in the mental sense, which took effect likewise within BiH and between the newly independent state and its neighbours Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro. Three ethnic societies were created in Bosnia and Herzegovina that became politically assigned to two entities with the peace contract of Dayton: the Republika Srpska and the Federation of BiH, with their respective railway companies ŽRS and ŽFBiH. Transport and free mobility were envisaged to be binding elements that should facilitate reconciliation and restoration of a functioning state. Indeed, although the state level institutions proved to be weak, the geographic entanglement of the two entities and their dependence on trade with Croatia and Serbia forced cooperation in the process of railway reconstruction to secure a basic economic life. With the aid of international donors, it was possible to provisionally reopen the most important transport lifelines within the first three years after the war. However, already by mid-1998, disparities in the reconditioning of different transport modes became visible. At that time, the scheme of main and regional roads was reconditioned by two thirds, while less than one third of railway lines was fit for operation. Among them was the railway route from Sarajevo southwards to the Croatian port Ploče, the first part of the scheme that was made traversable again; and the West-East connection through the Republika Srpska, from Novi Grad via Banja Luka to Doboj, that had apparently been in operation also at the end of war and had possibly never been interrupted.
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A basic quantum of connectivity was restored with the opening of railway borders between the RS and Croatia for freight trains and the establishment of a first inter-entity passenger connection between Sarajevo and Banja Luka in 1998. By the end of 2002, where a division between the first phase of post-war reconnection and later developments can be constituted, six of the formerly seven railway borders were used by freight trains, and passenger connections were offered on the following routes: Novi Grad–Banja Luka, Banja Luka–Doboj, Doboj–Tuzla, Tuzla–Brčko, Sarajevo–Banja Luka, and Sarajevo–Čapljina. Additionally, the four international routes Zagreb–Sarajevo–Ploče, Banja Luka–Belgrade, Sarajevo–Budapest and Bijeljina–Šid were supplied. Subsequently, a considerable rehabilitation of connectivity was achieved, with all important parts of the BH railway scheme in operation except for the track in the Krajina around Bihać. The quality of the reconstructed routes, however, was very low and transport could be conducted only provisionally, as most of the electrification and signalling systems were destroyed and the deteriorated tracks and the scarce and damaged rolling stock allowed only for reduced speed. After 2002, the focus of railway investment shifted to the mitigation of those problems, and only minor changes occurred in the quantitative connectivity of the network between 2003 and 2012. That year marked the beginning of a more turbulent period, especially for the ŽFBiH. At first, the enormous debt of the company forced the suspension of most international and several domestic passenger connections. Since 2015, obligations are paid off and the connectivity started to improve again with investments in passenger trains and the modernisation of tracks. At the same time, BiH’s last international railway link (Sarajevo–Zagreb) and all passenger trains in the Tuzla region were suspended in 2017 and 2019, respectively. ŽFBiH sees itself as a unifier of the state and the region, yet it is unclear when international railway connections will be re-established. The changing of international regulations does not seem a plausible reason for their abandonment in the first place, rather the political unwillingness (especially by Croatia) to cover the financial losses that railway integration in the region brings, given the uncompetitiveness of passenger transport by rail. A comparison between 2020 (pre-COVID-19) and 1990 shows a dramatic loss of connectivity both in the number of offered passenger trains per day and in the travel time on all routes within BiH. The only case of a higher post-war than pre-war connectivity was the long-distance link on the Vc corridor between Sarajevo and Budapest, where direct trains had been offered
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between 2002 and 2012 in contrast to 1990. Alongside a lack of comfort due to the shabbiness of the rolling stock, the slowness of trains compared to road transport and the insufficient number of connections can be noted as the main reasons for the low utilisation of the BH railway by passengers. According to official figures from 2019, the relative share of the railway in passenger transport amounted to a marginal 4.2% in the RS and even lower 2.8% in FBiH, measured in passenger kilometres. In absolute numbers, however, both BH railway companies started to grow again after reaching their nadir in passenger transport in 2016 and 2017, respectively, which indicates that the restructuring efforts of ŽFBiH and ŽRS – the latter compelled by World Bank conditions for financial aid – start to bear fruit. In the freight sector, on the other hand, rail transport regained considerable significance already between 2003 and 2005, when the basic rehabilitation of infrastructure was completed. The two companies were responsible for approximately a quarter of freight haulage in tonne kilometres in 2019. The European Union acts as the main investor in the transport infrastructure of the Western Balkans and is eager to expand its market rules and the system of intermodal transport corridors to the region. With the establishment of the Transport Community in 2017, it strives to coordinate and facilitate the integration of transport infrastructure between BiH and its neighbours. However, BH politicians clearly prioritise the construction of high-ranking road infrastructure over investment in the railway sector, which further disadvantages the railway in its future competitiveness.
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4. A railway revival in Bosnia and Herzegovina – Chances, arguments and requirements
With both the history and the current state of the railway system in Bosnia and Herzegovina well assessed, this final chapter shall offer a brief overview of the main arguments and requirements for its reanimation, with an emphasis on the especially challenged passenger sector. Based on key findings from transport science and environmental accounting, it will be critically examined if the current transport policies of BiH are fit to meet the goal of a socially and environmentally sustainable mobility system with the railway as a backbone. The chapter does not strive for a direct application of econometric transport models to the BH space, it rather invokes case studies from various countries to support basic considerations on the railway in BiH. In the first section, general figures on the relative cost-efficiency of road and rail transport under consideration of the negative externalities will be established, with a more detailed analysis of greenhouse gas emission and air pollution. Furthermore, the relation between transport demand, motorisation and economic growth is examined. The second section deals with the key requirements for competitive rail passenger transport in Bosnia and Herzegovina and draws on findings from Chapter 3.4 and additional surveys. It also criticises the prioritisation of investment in road infrastructure as a crucial obstacle to a railway revival without rebound effects on total transport externalities.
4.1. Flaws in traditional transport policy and arguments for the railway as focal point in BH transport investment
If direct cost-efficiency is the only argument, the railway does not seem to be able to compete with road transport in the passenger sector: average infrastructure costs for one passenger kilometre in the EU28 were in 2016 much higher for the railway than for passenger cars (13.4 €-cent/pkm for electric trains and 27.0 for diesel trains compared to only 2.1 for pc).549 The authors of the study mention that this “is mainly explained by the higher fixed costs (e.g.
549 See: Sustainable Transport Infrastructure Charging and Internalisation of Transport Externalities: Main Findings, 10. 121
construction costs)”550 of the railway, while the wide gap between driving modes is partly due to the lower occupancy rate of diesel trains and the lower utilisation of diesel infrastructure.551 Therefore, if a similar relation is assumed for Bosnia and Herzegovina where both train occupancy and track utilisation are very low for most railway routes (also electrified ones), measures to attract more passengers can decrease the financial disadvantage vis-à-vis the passenger car. In the freight sector, the difference is much less pronounced: “Heavy Goods Vehicles” (lorries) produce 2.3 €-cent/tkm in average infrastructural costs, as opposed to 3.0 for electric and 3.2 for diesel trains.552 Only a part of total transport costs, however, is covered by the expenditures for infrastructure. In general, “[r]ail is cost-effective for transportation over a long distance and with large quantities while road is faster and has better accessibility for collection and distribution activities for medium to short distances”.553 When external transport costs (ETC) that burden environment and society instead of shareholders and users are regarded as well, the financial advantage of road haulage vanishes completely, even though the driving mode of the railway influences the extent of its comparative advantage. According to the abovementioned study about transport externalities in the EU28 in 2016, lorries produce 4.2 €-cent/tkm ETC, while the externalities of electric (1.1) and diesel trains (1.8) are much lower.554 In an exclusive comparison of negative externalities, the damage done by road infrastructure also becomes salient in the passenger sector. A passenger kilometre on a passenger car entails 12.0 €-cent outsourced costs, as opposed to much lower 3.9 €-cent/pkm for diesel trains, 2.6 for electric trains and only 1.3 for high-speed trains.555 Due to the complexity of the matter and the quantity of influential factors, there is no generally applicable answer to the question whether the negative externalities of road passenger transport outweigh its internalised financial benefits vis-à-vis the railway. Moreover, the argument of the relative cost-efficiency between transport modes is of limited value in infrastructural planning. Knoflacher points out that efficiency in general is only in
550 Ibid. 551 See: ibid. 552 See: ibid. 553 Rui Wang et al., “Modeling and Optimization of a Road–rail Intermodal Transport System Under Uncertain Information,” Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 72 (2018): 423. 554 See: Sustainable Transport Infrastructure Charging and Internalisation of Transport Externalities: Main Findings, 12. 555 See: ibid. 122
combination with an intended purpose an expedient magnitude. Without a predefined aim that can be targeted more or less efficiently, efficiency is a void term.556 If the only aim of infrastructural measures is to increase traffic (=transport distances), road systems may indeed be more efficient than railway systems in the passenger sector, as their bigger temporal and spatial liberties minimise personal energy input by potential users. However, Knoflacher proves that increasing transport distances brings a diminishing marginal utility for economy. Since mobility never rises, but only shifts from the micro to the macro level when more long- distance infrastructure is provided,557 a steady number of daily routes require constantly growing energy input if transport distances are increased. In the last decades, more and more energy input for mobility brought less and less economic gain; bad spatial organisation that encouraged the far-scattering of routes made the system less efficient.558 In this respect, transport axes like roads or railway tracks are indeed engines of growth and expansion as well as magnets for new developments occurring around them, as suggested in Chapter 1.3 by quoting Brinckerhoff Jackson, yet those engines obtain their power from thinning-out processes of older, more energy-efficient spatial relations. In the following, two specific transport externality areas are presented in more detail that are especially relevant for Bosnia and Herzegovina. One of the external cost factors that received most attention in recent years on a global scale are emissions that accelerate climate change, the mitigation of which has become one of the most urgent political tasks worldwide. In November 2020, the Western Balkan countries committed “to work towards the 2050 target of a carbon-neutral continent together with the EU through mainstreaming a strict climate policy and reforming energy and transport sectors”,559 as the 2020 Sofia Declaration on the Green Agenda is cited in a media outlet. Although the Declaration is not publicly accessible and the exact stipulations cannot be assessed therefore, the European Commission made clear in its 2019 presentation of the European Green Deal that it envisages a substantial shift of freight haulage from road to rail and inland waterways and a shift of passenger
556 See: Knoflacher, Grundlagen der Verkehrs- und Siedlugnsplanung: Verkehrsplanung, 41. 557 See: ibid., 218. 558 See: ibid., 220–21. 559 Vladimir Spasić, “Here’s What Western Balkans Committed to in Sofia Declaration on Green Agenda,” Balkan Green Energy News, November 13, 2020, https://balkangreenenergynews.com/heres-what-western-balkans- committed-to-in-sofia-declaration-on-green- agenda/#:~:text=The%20agenda%2C%20envisaged%20by%20the,of%20the%20Western%20Balkan%20partner s.&text=It%20welcomed%20the%20text%20as,EU%20and%20Western%20Balkans%20summit. (accessed February 25, 2021). 123
transport to “more affordable, accessible, healthier and cleaner alternatives to their current mobility habits”,560 which, beside alternative systems of (car) drive such as hydrogen and electricity, also includes a shift to rail.561 Since the partial transfer from road to rail in relative terms alone would be useless if absolute passenger-kilometres and tonne-kilometres in individual transport would still rise, it can be stated, hence, that the decrease of road transport both in relative and absolute numbers is an important part of the EU’s strategy to establish a carbon neutral transport system on the continent. This, in turn, is incompatible with the further pursuit of the current BH transport policies. Knoflacher makes it clear that the construction of motorways and fast roads leads to a further shift of mobility to individual traffic.562 A sustained increase of road transport would not only obstruct the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, but also aggravate another externality. One of the most striking environmental problems of BiH is the chronically high air pollution in the urban centres, especially in the winter season, that makes the country one of the five states with the worst air quality worldwide563 and leads to a supposed yearly death toll of 3,000 people. This is the second highest mortality rate after North Korea by this cause, according to data by the World Health Organisation.564 Experts such as the lung specialist Dženan Halilović view the combustion of coal for individual heating as the main cause of the problem, but since there is a lack of scientific studies, the relative contribution of individual emitting sectors to the bad air quality in BiH cannot be determined.565 However, it seems legitimate to assume a considerable negative impact of the transport system as well. The journalist and Bosnian Herzegovinian diplomat Zlatko Dizdarević criticises that alleged unchangeable “realities” are abused by BH authorities to excuse their lack of action regarding air quality improvements:
“An insight into the current state leads to a substantial understanding of the present situation, which is still attempted to be disguised by insisting on facts that are indeed true: [there is] an
560 European Commission, “Communication from the Commission: The European Green Deal,”, https://eur- lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1596443911913&uri=CELEX:52019DC0640#document2 (accessed March 2, 2021), 2.1.5. 561 See: ibid. 562 See: Knoflacher, Grundlagen der Verkehrs- und Siedlugnsplanung: Verkehrsplanung, 218. 563 See: Zlatko Dizdarević, “Smog Korumpirane Politike,”, https://ba.boell.org/bs/2020/01/27/smog- korumpirane-politike (accessed February 25, 2021). 564 See: Devleta Brkić, “Kako Zagađeni Zrak Utiče Na Zdravlje: U BiH Uzrokuje 3.300 Preranih Smrti Svake Godine?,” Radiotelevizija Tuzlanskog Kantona, February 6, 2021, https://rtvtk.ba/kako-zagadjeni-zrak-utice-na- zdravlje-u-bih-uzrokuje-3-300-preranih-smrti-svake-godine/ (accessed 20201/02/25). 565 See: ibid. 124
enormous rise in the number of cars, their age causes a higher emission of harmful gases, the unorganised and sufficiently devastated public transport system simply pulls people to their private cars, the railway is de-facto `kicked out of the gameˊ”.566
Before some of the policies that established and perpetuate this situation will be deconstructed in the latter part of Chapter 4.1, it is important to mention that the driving mode of trains does not only considerably influence the railway’s emission levels of greenhouse gases, but also the emanation of nitrogen oxides and other harmful air pollutants.567 Vilotijević and her colleagues point out that the electrification of currently diesel supplied lines “would lead to [a] decrease in oil import and pollution of the environment in the vicinity of railway infrastructure”,568 but no general statements can be made about the extent of air quality improvement through road-to-rail transfer. This is also owing to the fact that the way in which electricity is produced has to be taken in consideration. In 2017, still nearly 65% of electricity generated in BiH came from fossil sources, as data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration indicates.569 While the emissions from fossil power plants certainly reduce the environmental and health benefits of railway electrification, the Western Balkan countries’ commitment to carbon neutrality by 2050 will also necessitate a green restructuring of the energy sector. The increase of energy efficiency and the use of renewables are pursued by the Energy Community that was founded already in 2006 and worked as model for the later established Transport Community. Its main purpose is to ”extend the EU internal energy market rules and principles”570 to the South-East and East of the continent. One of the most common arguments for keeping up the car-centred infrastructure system despite its increased greenhouse gas emissions, toxic air pollution and other external costs are the allegedly inseparable ties between ascending car ownership and economic growth. Traditionally, a rising percentage of cars among a population is perceived as an indicator of prosperity and development. This is still manifest in Milan Marinković’s work on the motorisation rate in former Yugoslav areas, where he states that a minimum of 250 passenger
566 Zlatko Dizdarević, “Smog korumpirane politike,”. Translated from Bosnian by Florian Supe. 567 See: Milica Vilotijević et al., “Sustainable Railway Infrastructure and Specific Environmental Issues in the Republic of Serbia,” Technical Gazette 25, Suppl. 2 (2018): 518. 568 Ibid., 516. 569 See: Global Petrol Prices, “The Energy Mix of Bosnia and Herzegovina,”, https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/energy_mix.php?countryId=184 (accessed March 4, 2021). 570 See: Energy Community, “Who We Are,”, https://energy-community.org/aboutus/whoweare.html (accessed March 4, 2021). 125
cars per thousand inhabitants (pc/1000 i) marks a “highly developed country”, whereas the point of absolute market satisfaction would be reached with 500 pc/1000 i.571 According to the figures Marinković uses in his chart, both BH entities had nearly the same motorisation rate in 2017, which exceeded the minimum threshold of a highly developed country by far: 280 pc/1000 i in the FBiH, 276 pc/1000 i in the RS. However, a self-conducted recalculation with his raw data discloses a mistake: while the outcome for the RS equals the number in his chart, the outcome for the FBiH is here with 247 pc/1000 significantly lower.572 Whatever number is correct, Marinković’s analysis of the development between 2013 and 2017 shows that in both entities, the motorisation rate was significantly rising while the population was declining. In comparison to the pre-war state, the increase is severe as well: In 1980’s Yugoslavia, only 111 out of 1000 inhabitants had owned a car.573 Based on this data, traditional scholarship would state a prosperous (transport) development in Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, while the wealth measured in GDP per capita is indeed higher in 2017’s BiH than in 1980’s,574 a more comprehensive view on prosperity suggests that more cars per inhabitant do not correlate with (sustainable) development anymore and are rather a sign of an insufficient and unattractive public transport system, as Dizdarević points out.575 This has been acknowledged already by Eastern European socialist authorities in the 1970s who had – without success – intended to limit the motorisation rate to 100-200 cars per 1,000 inhabitants.576 According to Hermann Knoflacher, the tenacious assumption that economic prosperity cannot be detached from (increasing) motorisation is caused by an unscientific mix-up between correlation and causality, where the usual is mistaken for the coercible. He points out that as a basic rule, scientific theories are falsified as soon as they can be proved wrong in a single
571 Marinković, “Stepen motorizacije u Srbiji, Republici Srpskoj, Federaciji BIH, Crnoj Gori iSjevernoj Makedoniji,”: 47. 572 See: ibid., 50. 573 This figure is self-calculated out of the given motorisation rate of 9 i/pc. See: ibid., 47. 574 For 1980, UN data indicates GDP per capita in former Yugoslavia with 3,176 USD (since BiH was among the economically less developed spaces, the figure for the republic was probably lower than the Yugoslav average); for 2017, GDP per capita in BiH amounted to 5,609 USD. The latter figure is calculated with the following World Bank data: 18.08 billion GSD divided by a population of 3.352 million. See: United Nations Statistics Division, “Per Capita GDP at Current Prices - US Dollars: Former Yugoslavia,”, http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=SNAAMA&f=grID%3a101%3bcurrID%3aUSD%3bpcFlag%3a1%3bcrID%3a890 (accessed February 10, 2021); See: World Bank Data, “Bosnia and Herzegovina: GDP, Population,”, https://data.worldbank.org/country/bosnia-and-herzegovina (accessed February 10, 2021). 575 See: Zlatko Dizdarević, “Smog korumpirane politike,”. 576 See: Jozef Wilczynski, “The Passenger Car and Socialist Economic Planning,” in East European Transport Regions and Modes, 280. 126
case. As counter-examples, the transport scientist invokes Singapore and Hongkong, where a steadily rising income has been uncoupled from a nearly stable motorisation rate for decades. This shows that the statistic correlation of the two magnitudes is determined by the frame conditions and that a rising income is possible with a stable relation between inhabitants and number of cars.577 In the two densely populated territories Singapore and Hongkong, the main determinant that forced authorities to implement strict (financial) policies against rising motorisation rates is the scarcity of space.578 However, considering the negative externalities of excessive land consumption that have been highlighted in Chapter 1.3, the fact that the population density of BiH is 120 times lower than the one of Singapore579 is not a reason to ignore the examples of a successful detachment. Already in his 2007 reference book about the basics of transport planning, Knoflacher states that “the European Union strives for an uncoupling of transport growth and economic growth but has not yet pursued concrete measures to realise this aim.”580 With the European Green Deal, measures to achieve “a 90% reduction in transport emissions […] by 2050”581 were presented in 2019. However, it is disputed whether carbon neutrality can be achieved only by internalising externalities and shifting transport to more sustainable modes such as the railway, if the systemic aim to increase transport distances through infrastructure investment remains untouched. This is part of the broader question if economic growth can be detached from natural resource use, which “was proven impossible by global and local economic systems”582 according to Eva Eckert and Oleksandra Kovalevska. In my thesis, however, this issue is not further examined. The following considerations concentrate on policies that determine individual transport mode decisions.
“Transport systems are developed principally by political endeavour where demand is established from a mixture of social, economic or strategic needs. The Influence of political
577 See: Knoflacher, Grundlagen der Verkehrs- und Siedlugnsplanung: Verkehrsplanung, 146–47. 578 See: ibid., 147–48. 579 See: World Bank Data, “Population Density (People Per Sq. Km of Land Area),”, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.POP.DNST (accessed March 5, 2021). 580 Knoflacher, Grundlagen der Verkehrs- und Siedlugnsplanung: Verkehrsplanung, 146. 581 European Commission, “Communication from the Commission,”, 2.1.5. 582 Eva Eckert and Oleksandra Kovalevska, “Sustainability in the European Union: Analyzing the Discourse of the European Green Deal,” Journal of Risk and Financial Management 14, no. 2 (2021): 19, https://res.mdpi.com/jrfm/jrfm-14-00080/article_deploy/jrfm-14-00080.pdf (accessed March 5, 2021). 127
considerations on Transport geography is fundamental. Political geography and transport geography are enmeshed.”583
In this statement, Howkins highlights the political power to actively shape the spatial development of a country in line with perceived needs. However, as established before, the assumption that social and economic needs demand the construction of new transport infrastructure is flawed; rather are new transport infrastructure and an abundance of cars the main driving forces for a more distant and car-targeted geographic allocation of potential destinations (places where economic and social needs can be fulfilled). As a case in point, in the Balkan Barometer survey for BiH in 2020, the railway was invoked only by 5% of respondents to answer the question “which passenger transport mode improvements would have the highest beneficial impact on your travelling?” Since 2015 (11%), the figure was in nearly constant decrease. In the same period, between 74% and 83% of respondents saw improvements in the car infrastructure as most beneficial for themselves.584 This slant in the public opinion clearly mirrors the current usage of transport modes. Since Beate Littig points out that mobility practices are in general routine behaviour,585 and the railway is currently used as main transport mode only by a marginal number of Bosnians and Herzegovinians, imagined improvements tend to focus on roads. If opinion polls such as the cited one are used as basis for political decisions on infrastructure investment, car dependency with all the above-mentioned negative externalities will be preserved. Knoflacher offers a psychological explanation for individual behaviour related to mobility: humans strive to reach a state of maximised comfort, their actions are aimed at remaining in that state and getting back to it when they are not in it. Making societally desired behaviour more convenient and undesired behaviour less convenient has therefore the most important steering effect in transport policy.586 In this context, the transport scientist also invokes the utility of traffic congestion, as it gives car drivers the chance to behave rationally and understand the functioning of traffic. If massive congestion appears several days in a row on a certain route, they will start using
583 Howkins, “Changing hegemonies and new external pressures: South East European railway networks in transition,”: 187. 584 See: Regional Cooperation Council, “Balkan Public Barometer: Transport Improvements,”, https://www.rcc.int/balkanbarometer/results/2/public (accessed March 9, 2021). 585 See: Beate Littig, “»Um Routinen Zu Verändern, Bedarf Es Niederschwelliger Gelegenheitsstrukturen Und Anreize, Neues Auszuprobieren.«,”, https://www.vcoe.at/news/details/transformation. 586 See: Knoflacher, Grundlagen der Verkehrs- und Siedlugnsplanung: Verkehrsplanung, 107–8. 128
alternative routes or transport modes to avoid it, until congestion is reduced to a “socially acceptable level”.587 This, however, does not happen if the available alternatives, e.g. rail connections, are still less convenient and require still more energy (time) than the stressful road traffic situation. Investment in extra motorway lanes to mitigate congestion and make transport flows more efficient leads to a steady increase of car traffic, until a new balance with the same amount of “socially acceptable” congestion as before the measure is reached.588 The financial resources invested in the broadening of road capacities to make traffic more efficient are therefore a loss of transport energy.589 Beside the high burden for society and environment imposed by the transport policies of the last decades, which is bound to increase further upon unchanged pursuit of those policies, a final argument for the focus on railway investment in Bosnia and Herzegovina is the relative scarcity of high-capacity road infrastructure. For “states that did not yet advance so far in the flawed development of technic transport systems”, there is a “big chance” of building a more sustainable one.590 Copying the erroneous development that the United States of America and central Europe made some decades ago just in a time when its negative consequence are no longer deniable, on the other hand, is a “fundamental threat” with regard to the available financial and spatial resources.591
4.2. Requirements for and impediments to a passenger railway revival in BiH
As the Secretariat of the Transport Community between the European Union and the six Western Balkan states points out, a reanimation of the railway can only function regionally: “The Western Balkan is a small transport market and even a smaller rail one. Without a strong coordination of policies and investments, none of the parties to the Treaty could revitalise its rail market alone.”592
587 Ibid., 187. 588 See: ibid. 589 See: ibid., 107. 590 Ibid., 93. 591 See: ibid. 592 Transport Community. The Permanent Secretariat, “Developing a Regional Rail Strategy for the Western Balkans,”, https://www.transport-community.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Rail-fiche_final2806.pdf (accessed February 25, 2021), 2. 129
For Bosnia and Herzegovina, the general framework seems to improve, with Croatian Railways planning an investment of €4.5 billion in infrastructure until 2030593 and the investment volume of Serbian Railways in current and planned projects amounting to €6.2 billion.594 However, both countries have shifted their attention to the railway only after the – preliminary – completion of their motorway system, in which, in the case of Serbia, further massive investment is envisaged.595 Therefore, without invasive steering measures, the reanimation of the railway is unlikely to accomplish the required road-to-rail transfer in those countries, rather it will lead to a rebound effect in form of an additional increase in transport distances. As first steps towards the implementation of the Transport Community, the Ministers of Transport of the Western Balkans endorsed four action plans in October 2020, one of them regarding the railway. It covers the time span until 2023 and comprises six action areas: (1) rail market opening, (2) passenger rights, (3) border crossing operations, (4) interoperability, (5) governance, and (6) the modernisation of rail infrastructure.596 The following section shall examine what is required to make the Bosnian Herzegovinian railway system more attractive for passengers and how those fields are related to the six action areas mentioned above. Although it has been established that in traffic systems in total, there are no time savings through greater speed,597 the relative speed of one transport mode in comparison with another is an important magnitude. The findings in sections 3.3 and 3.4 suggest that the most decisive disadvantage of the BH railway is its low connectivity. Investment to raise the possible train speed on tracks and reduce the total travel time by other measures is therefore inevitable to achieve a transfer from road to rail in the passenger sector. Within Bosnia and Herzegovina, the last of the six listed Transport Community actions is the only one working directly towards this goal, while in cross-border traffic, also measures 3 and 4 facilitate integration and therefore the abolition of waiting time. However, due to the difficult topography of the country, it is unlikely that trains will be able to offer a competitive travel
593 See: Branimir Bradarić, “Hrvatska Ulaže Milijarde Eura U Željeznice,” balkans.aljazeera.net, November 30, 2020, https://balkans.aljazeera.net/teme/2020/11/30/hrvatska-ulaze-milijarde-eura-u-zeljeznice. 594 See: Infrastruktura Železnice Srbije ad, “Потпредседница Владе Србије Зорана Михајловић Са ММФ-Ом: Инфраструктура Од Суштинског Значаја За Привредни Раст,”, https://infrazs.rs/2020/02/potpredsednica- vlade-srbije-zorana-mihajlovic-sa-mmf-om-infrastruktura-od-sustinskog-znacaja-za-privredni-rast/ (accessed February 24, 2021). 595 See: ibid; See: Bradarić, “Hrvatska ulaže milijarde eura u željeznice,”. 596 See: Transport Community. The Permanent Secretariat, “Action Plan for Rail,”, https://www.transport- community.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Rail-Action-Plan.pdf (accessed March 10, 2021), 29. 597 See: Knoflacher, Grundlagen der Verkehrs- und Siedlugnsplanung: Verkehrsplanung, 42. 130
time vis-à-vis cars, if achievements in the modernisation of existing (winding) tracks are foiled by new-built straight motorways. The second aspect of connectivity is the number and regularity of daily train links. The dramatic consequences of their insufficiency for the overall attractiveness of the BH railway, as invoked by Dakić and Kabić, are also highlighted by a study about changes in individual transport behaviour in Austria. The 2017 survey for the Austrian Mobility Club VCÖ with 13,000 respondents showed a clear relation: the worse passengers rated the frequency of train connections, the more likely they were to change from train to car as their most-used transport mode.598 Vice versa, the top three factors that had a “big” or “very big” influence on changing from car to train in Austria were the usable time in the train (85% of respondents) – which indicates the importance of comfort and, it may be assumed, also the availability of internet – , a shorter travel time (70%) and an improved train supply (68%), which relates to an increased frequency of connections.599 In her Master’s thesis, Dženet Ljevo establishes a vision to mitigate the problem of low connectivity by drafting a synchronised timetable for the railway system in BiH. The definition of a synchronised schedule, as indicated already in Chapter 2.5, is that “all trains of a railway network operate in regular, periodically recurring intervals, in a given cycle time.”600 In such a railway scheme, connectivity is enhanced not only by offering more connections, but also by securing the possibility to change trains at all transfer stations with a minimum of waiting time, which shortens the total travel time.601 Ljevo lists two basic prerequisites for a synchronised railway timetable: firstly, trains must be able to arrive at and leave stations at the same time, which necessitates both that the number of tracks in the station equals the number of approaching routes and the existence of crossing points on single-track routes. Secondly, there must be a significant difference in the travel speed of different train categories. Since the latter condition was not fulfilled in BiH as of 2012 and the vast majority of routes is built in single-track, she suggested a synchronised two-hour interval as the most feasible solution for the railway network of the country,602 which would be a massive improvement compared to the current timetables. Beside big investments in
598 See: VCÖ - Verkehrsclub Österreich, “Welche Faktoren über den Wechsel zwischen Auto und Bahn entscheiden,”. 599 See: ibid. 600 Ljevo, Entwurf eines Taktfahrplans für das Eisenbahnnetz in Bosnien und Herzegovina, 4. 601 See: ibid., 21. 602 See: ibid., 4. 131
track and signalling infrastructure, the proposed increase in connections would also necessitate the acquisition of further rolling stock, the lack of which was mentioned as one of the key problems of the BH railway companies already in the country’s development strategy in the 2000s.603 Since then, the only information on a removal of this bottleneck regards the ŽFBiH’s procurement of two high-quality Talgo trains, which was criticised as inapt for the deteriorated tracks of BiH.604 However, with regard to the premise that beside connectivity, comfort and quality are the most important decision factors by potential passengers to travel by train instead of car or bus, the Talgo trains seem to have been a deliberate investment. The cited assumptions about passenger priorities are also backed by surveys conducted in Belgrade in 2012 and 2016, which show that “passengers choose the transport mode regarding travel duration, vehicle comfort, travel distance, personal impression of safety, connections to other modes of transport (interchange possibility), ticket price and environmental protection”,605 while it is noted that the latter two factors are considerably less decisive. Moreover, according to Milica Vilotijević and her colleagues, competitiveness of railways may be provided through “[m]odern infrastructure in railway stations, accessibility for all passengers including people with reduced mobility, effective interchanges, comfortable vehicles with modern equipment, related services, stimulation of multimodal transport of passengers and goods, acceptable prices and reliable transport.”606 For decades, multimodality is a key aspect in the EU’s transport strategy. The concept was used already in drafting the Helsinki Corridors in the 1990s607 and is pursued until today by the European Commission. In its 2019 Green Deal Communication, the promotion of multimodal transport and other measures are envisaged to “increase the efficiency of the transport system”.608 Roth also emphasises the structural interdependency of road and rail systems.609 Since the railway networks in general “always remained wide-meshed, never
603 See: Srednjoročna razvojna strategija BiH 2004–2007, 209. 604 See: M. T., “Voz Banja Luka - Sarajevo: Kupljena 31 karta, talgo otišao, dugovanja ostala,”. 605 Vilotijević et al., “Sustainable Railway Infrastructure and Specific Environmental Issues in the Republic of Serbia,”: 516–7. 606 Ibid., 517. 607 See: Stancu, Varzaru and Lazarescu, “Helsinki Corridors: Ways of European Expansion and Development,”: 93. 608 European Commission, “Communication from the Commission,”, 2.1.5. 609 See: Ralf Roth, “Rails and Roads Between Competition and Interdependency: A Long and Winding Relationship with Many Innovations That Failed,” in From Rail to Road and Back Again? A Century of Transport Competition 132
close-knit”,610 they require roads which connect smaller towns and villages to the train- supplied main arteries. For Bosnia and Herzegovina, this demand is particularly salient since the suspension of its narrow-gauge lines. While the intermodal hub and spoke approach611 seems promising to solve the problem of the railway’s low density in BiH, the current EU-sponsored transport investment policies of the country diverge widely from this idea. For tackling the harmful externalities of road transport, the envisaged partial road-to-rail transfer necessitates that cars and lorries are “driven back to a regional and sometimes only local level”612, a development that had occurred already in the 19th century period of rail network expansion, to which the cited quote refers. Instead, a different kind of intermodality is implemented in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The prioritised construction of high-capacity long-distance road infrastructure alongside and instead of railway routes establishes parallel structures that erode a structural advantage of trains in both the passenger and the freight sector: straight and unhindered long-distance transport of large quantities. Hence, it can be concluded that the currently pursued concept of intermodality in BiH is counterproductive to meet the road-to-rail goal of the Green Deal. Instead of seizing the opportunity to construct infrastructure that facilitates the decarbonisation target, financial resources are used to build road infrastructure which, once existent, needs to be made less attractive with financial and other steering measures. Moreover, even without the further internalisation of externalities, Dakić doubts that the existing motorway Banja Luka–Doboj in the Republika Srpska is cost-efficient, since too little people would use it because of the relatively high fees.613 If his proposition holds true and applies to other sections as well, economic arguments for BH motorways would be void. The high-capacity road infrastructure of the country would be only profitable with an increase in
and Interdependency, ed. Ralf Roth and Colin Divall, 41–76, Modern Economics and Social History Series (Farnham/Burlington: Ashgate, 2015), 60. 610 Ibid. 611 “Hub and spoke” refers to a transport system where railway stations work as convenient and efficient multimodal transfer points. While the largest part of the overall route is travelled by train, road transport modes like busses and cars are used for the first and the last mile, the route from starting point A to train station A1 and from train station B1 to destination B. The system is both applicable to the passenger and the goods sector. Rui Wang and his colleagues developed models for optimising hub and spoke systems in freight haulage and concluded that an economic “win-win situation” can be achieved with the advantages of road and rail. Wang et al., “Modeling and optimization of a road–rail intermodal transport system under uncertain information,”: 435 612 Ralf Roth, “Rails and Roads Between Competition and Interdependency: a Long and Winding Relationship with Many Innovations That Failed,” in From Rail to Road and Back Again?, 61. 613 See: Tihomir Dakić and Dragan Kabić, interview by Florian Supe, 25:00 min. 133
traffic on it, which contradicts the necessities of the decarbonisation target. A case study from the United Kingdom shows that even with the expectable technological improvements and financial subsidies, low or zero emission road vehicles (e.g. electric cars) “are unlikely to be sufficient to meet long term emissions reduction targets”,614 beside the fact that a timely and large-scale shift towards alternative car driving modes in Bosnia and Herzegovina is highly unrealistic. Now I shall return to the initial question how the different areas of the Transport Community’s rail action plan can impact the attractivity of the passenger railway in BiH. Before, it has been established that only three of the six areas directly tackle the problems of low connectivity and comfort. Nevertheless, the focus on (1) rail market opening, (2) passenger rights and (5) governance seems legitimate as well, in light of the fact that €2 billion were invested in rail infrastructure in the Western Balkans region between 2010 and 2020, while passenger traffic dropped by 60% and freight traffic by 15% during the same period.615 The Transport Community Secretariat relates this to the bad governance of the railway systems and a “lack of competitive rail transport services”.616 Hence, the reforms in the management of ŽFBiH and ŽRS that were started in recent years are a prerequisite for making the railway attractive again to passengers. The practice of extensive overmanning, corruption and other consequences of inefficient governance that various sources indicate especially for the latter company (see Chapter 3.4) explain why infrastructural investment does not (yet) result in a rising share of rail transport in total passenger mobility in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The EU’s pressure for opening public transport to competition, on the other hand, is discussed controversially by scholars.617
4.3. Summary
Bosnia and Herzegovina does not yet possess a fast and convenient transport system, which is perceived as a prerequisite for economic and societal reintegration with its neighbours and
614 Christoph Mazur et al., “Comparing the Effects of Vehicle Automation, Policy-Making and Changed User Preferences on the Uptake of Electric Cars and Emissions from Transport,” Sustainability 10, no. 676 (2018): 16, https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/3/676/htm (accessed March 12, 2021). 615 See: Transport Community. The Permanent Secretariat, “Developing a Regional Rail Strategy for the Western Balkans,”, 1. 616 Ibid. 617 For critique on including the railway in the neo-liberal paradigm, see: Salento and Pesante, “Liberalisation and Value Extraction,”. 134
the rest of Europe. Rather than emulating the outdated car-centred transport policies of other countries, decision makers should utilise this situation to build a transport system with less external costs for environment and society. There are several main arguments for directing the massive transport investments by the European Union and other actors primarily to the railway. Firstly, the decarbonisation commitments of BiH to mitigate climate change, which can be only fulfilled by a traffic shift from road to rail. A shift to road vehicles with alternative driving modes is not sufficient to meet the targets. Secondly, the transport system must contribute to tackle air pollution, the most severe environmental and health problem of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In general, road transport causes considerably higher negative externalities than rail transport. Further investment in full electrification of the scheme is important to secure the highest cost- efficiency and the least external costs that the railway can offer. Since the demand for transport infrastructure can never be fulfilled, the current prioritisation of motorway construction will work as an incentive for more car traffic and create the need for constantly rising road capacities in BiH. Therefore, this prioritisation will make it even harder to build a competitive railway system. When both the road and the rail systems will enlarge their capacities for fast mobility, the necessary road-to-rail transfer cannot be achieved. Instead, it is likely that the rebound effect would lead to an increase in travel distances for both modes. While this is an eligible goal from the standpoint of regional integration, such a system is unfit to meet the decarbonisation target. The increase of transport distances by new high-capacity infrastructure brings a diminishing marginal utility for economy. Also, an uncoupling of transport growth and resource consumption is probably impossible. It must be questioned, therefore, to which extent the positive effects of a BH transport growth outweigh the negative ones. This problem pertains to all transport modes. The most important leverage to make the BH railway more attractive for passengers lies in connectivity and quality. The insignificant share of the railway in total passenger mobility could be raised with investments in shortening the travel time and offering more daily connections. Promising approaches are the introduction of a synchronised timetable with a two-hour interval and measures to secure that routes can be covered faster by train than by car. The problem of the rail network’s low density can be alleviated by creating intermodal transfer points at railway stations, from where the last mile can be covered by road transport.
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5. Conclusion
After tracing the railway in Bosnia and Herzegovina through its 150 years long, unstable history of ascent, thriving and decline, several key findings shall be highlighted on the basis of the three research questions established in the introduction. Firstly, how did the railway connectivity of Bosnia and Herzegovina evolve through time and how does it relate to the political and economic (dis)integration of spaces? With the laying of the first rails in BiH in the 1870s, the transport orientation of the BH space was sustainably realigned to the North, towards the centres of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This entailed a weakening of the century-old economic, political and social ties to the Ottoman Empire and Serbia in the East and to the Adriatic coast in the West, the effects of which are still visible in today’s transport infrastructure. Until World War I, the internal connectivity of the Bosnian Herzegovinian space advanced considerably with the construction of a widely ramified narrow-gauge railway scheme that served mostly for economic, but also for military purposes, but could never fulfil the diverging needs of Austrian and Hungarian imperialism. In interwar Yugoslavia, the system was supplemented with a small number of new routes, yet financial straits prevented the realisation of any of the desired links between the Kingdom’s inland and Dalmatia that would have crossed the BH space. Integrational leaps were only made after World War II, when the socialist leadership achieved the construction of several standard-gauge lines, and successively extended the railway network in Bosnia-Herzegovina until it reached its highest density in the middle of the 1960s. However, also in that time, many parts of BiH remained unconnected and the economic development was curbed by insufficient transport capacities. After the suspension of all narrow-gauge lines until 1978 due to their unprofitability in the wake of ascending mass motorisation, only seven of formerly 13 or 14 railway border crossings to neighbouring republics were left. It can be stated that in the last decades of socialist Yugoslavia, road infrastructure successively took over the role as main bearer of Bosnian Herzegovinian transport connectivity, yet the railway remained an important integrational factor, especially in long-distance traffic with other republics. Within the years of the Bosnian War 1992–1995, the slow decline of the railway’s significance accelerated to total disintegration. In the new, ethnically defined landscape of fragmented spaces on former Yugoslavia, it took until 2002 to restore a minimum of railway connectivity between the BH entities and Croatia in order to resume a basic economic life. Although most
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parts of the network could be reconstructed and modernised with foreign aid and investment, in 2020 the railway connectivity of BiH still accounts only for a fractional amount of the railway connectivity in the late socialist republic. Most domestic routes are supplied by passenger trains, but there are no international connections since 2017, and the inter-entity train service between the centres of the country is limited to a maximum of two daily trains per direction. Notwithstanding the fact that the railway plays a negligible role in BH passenger mobility, the scarcity of connections and their total non-existence in cross-border traffic indicate a low amount of coordination and reintegration between the ethnically defined spaces in the region. While passenger connectivity in the sole domain of the Railways of the Republika Srpska remained relatively stable in the last 25 years, the range of services offered by the Railways of the Federation of BiH and both companies together fluctuated considerably. The second research question was, what are the reasons for the loss of the railway’s significance from the 1960s until today? The first and foremost reason is the systemic competition by road traffic. Since the beginning of its construction history, the Bosnian Herzegovinian railway system was never perceived as sufficient to fulfil its role as catalyst of the economic development. Due to the chronic scarcity of available investment funds, the development of rail infrastructure proceeded at all times only as implementation of minimal solutions. Nevertheless, the railway remained the backbone of BH transport in the late 19th and the first two thirds of the 20th century. Then, rapidly rising mass motorisation and car-centred infrastructure investment spiralled into a perpetuated increase of demand for road transport. The causal relation that an amplification of road capacities entails ever more demand for road traffic was either neglected or not considered as problematic. Hence, owing to the symbolic power of the car as a means of individual freedom and the non-consideration of higher externalities, the alleged competitive advantage of road transport led to a constant decline of the railway especially in the passenger sector. With the ethnic fragmentation of society and the physical destruction of transport infrastructure in the Bosnian War, mobility in general became severely restrained for years. Since the existence and the alignment of transport connections shape the perception of space, the question if the physical obstruction of mobility fortified the inwards orientation of the ethnically defined social groups in BiH deserves the attention of future scholarship.
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While the rehabilitation and construction of new railway lines after World War II had been advertised as a symbol of recovery and reintegration, reconnection processes in early Daytonian Bosnia and Herzegovina were conducted as a merely physical endeavour driven by economic necessities. Already in the late 1990s, the rehabilitation of roads proceeded with higher pace than the more cumbersome rehabilitation of railway infrastructure, but this was only one of the factors that caused the reconstruction of BiH as a road-bound society. The supply of the relatively small railway scheme by two (initially three) companies and their low amount of coordination despite close territorial entanglement inhibited the efficiency of transport, which was aggravated by mismanagement and corruption. Beside high foreign investments in rail infrastructure, the debt of the companies rose constantly until 2015/2017, while passenger numbers remained marginal in relative terms. This can be explained by the fact that the three most important prerequisites for passengers to change from car or bus to train are not fulfilled: an acceptable frequency of connections, shorter or equal travel time than by road, comfort and quality of coaches. The chronically dire economic situation of the Railways of the Republika Srpska and the Railways of the Federation of BiH curtailed the possibility to acquire new rolling stock which is needed to achieve the first and the latter. Investments in tracks and signalling systems to reduce travel time, on the other hand, are foiled by the prioritisation of investment in road infrastructure. With the current infrastructure policies, the competitive advantage of road traffic is further amplified rather than reduced. The third and final research question was, what are the main arguments and requirements for the reanimation of the BH railway system? The low density of high-capacity road infrastructure in Bosnia and Herzegovina offers the opportunity to build a transport system with considerably less externalities than in other European countries. A traffic shift from road to rail is required to meet the 2050 target of complete decarbonisation to which BiH committed in 2020. Increased railway usage that replaces a part of current road transport instead of producing additional traffic would lead to a lower contribution of the Bosnian Herzegovinian transport system to climate change, air pollution, land consumption and other negative effects that generate high external costs for society and environment. In the long run, however, constant transport distance growth brings a sinking marginal utility for economy, regardless of the transport mode.
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The regional cooperation conducted within the frame of the Transport Community is a main prerequisite for a railway revival in BiH. Furthermore, an efficient management of the railway companies ŽRS and ŽFBiH is needed to ensure that (foreign) investment can be used to improve connectivity and quality of services. However, the main requirement for a BH railway system that bears the brunt of the country’s freight and passenger transport is competitiveness with road transport. This, in turn, necessitates cost transparency through the internalisation of externalities and a prioritisation of rail-related investment over road-related capital spending. The current transport investment policy of the European Union, where expenditure focuses on motorways in line with the preferences of BH decision-makers, fails to deliver on the EU’s decarbonisation commitments.
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Annexe
Abbreviations
BiH Bosnia and Herzegovina BH Bosnian Herzegovinian BHŽJK Bosnia and Herzegovina Railways Public Corporation ECMT European Conference of Ministers of Transport e.g. for example ETC external transport costs FBiH Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina FRY Federal Republic of Yugoslavia GDP gross domestic product HR Croatia HŽ Croatian Railways JŽ Yugoslav Railways km kilometre mm millimetre NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration ÖBB Austrian Railways OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development pc passenger car PETC Pan-European transport corridor pkm passenger kilometre RIC International Coach Regulation RS Republika Srpska SFOR Stabilisation Force SFRY Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia SRB Serbia SRBiH Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina TINA Transport Infrastructure Needs Assessment tkm tonne-kilometre
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US United States of America USD United States Dollar USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ŽFBH Railways of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina ŽRS Railways of the Republika Srpska
Interview Questions
The statements by Štefica Galić, Tihomir Dakić, Dragan Kabić and Miodrag Živanović relate to the following semi-open questions which were sent to them in Bosnian via E-Mail.
1. In your opinion, how were the state and the image of the railway in Bosnia and Herzegovina among citizens before the war of the 1990s? Was it still used by a lot of passengers, or were train rides already in the 1980s perceived as an inconvenient travel option, mostly used by people who did not possess a car?
2. In spring 1998, the first railway links between the Republika Srpska and both the Federation of BiH and Croatia were re-established (passenger train Banja Luka– Sarajevo; opening of the railway borders Dobrljin and Brčko). Do you think that a political relaxation occurred in that time, or do you think those steps did not have political reasons?
3. In your opinion, why do people in BiH today not use the train anymore as a transport mode, even on those routes where passenger connections exist? Is its slowness in comparison to the car the only reason, or are there other reasons for the neglect of the railway as well?
4. Which role, in your opinion, play political relations in the re-establishment and suspension of transport connections after the Bosnian War? Are economic reasons the only factors, or do political needs or political aversion between the entities, Croatia and Serbia play a role as well?
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