Keywords: railway, passenger transport, railway terminals, infrastructure, rail services, survey.

The race for sustainable mobility is a global one. Modern European railways operate under conditions of regulated competition and with connections to other modes of transportation. The objective is to eliminate all barriers between transportation modes and national rail systems, to facilitate the process of integration and thus to create a single European transportation system.

For successful economic functioning in the field of railway passenger transportation, it is necessary to consider the requirements of the users. The research, whose results are shown in this paper, show that passengers choose the mode of transportation regarding comfort, travel time, an impression of personal safety, travel distance and connections to other modes of transport. Ticket price is important but not a decisive criterion. Awareness of environmental protection does not affect the choice of travel. The offered infrastructure and program of related services directly shape the mobility of passengers.

The Serbian Railways has a favorable position in the European railway network due to which more than half of the total number of passenger stations (58%) are on the international routes [1]. However, this is a necessary but not sufficient condition for successful functioning of rail transport. We consider that in order to use these benefits the following measures are necessary:

• to establish an interoperability of the Serbian railway network within the European network,
• to separate the passenger and freight subsystem in the major railway junctions,
• to resolve the conflict of the spatial position of the passenger railway subsystems, the urban environment and other traffic infrastructure,
• to ensure that passenger stations are located at the intersection of passenger flows in the important transportation junctions,
• to use the concept of a pass-through station type,
• to integrate the stations into the urban matrix and the architecture of the town,
• to develop station functional contents vertically with easy access to all levels for all users,
• to fit stations in a multi-modal traffic interchange, and
• to ensure good comfort in terms of orientation, the presence of plenty of daylight and barrier-free access to all station contents for passengers with reduced mobility.

The above measures are not local. They can be applied for any national network that is part of the European railway network.

The research presented in this paper indicates that the measures taken so far to increase the number of passengers using the Serbian railways are not sufficient. The solution is to apply the accessibility standards during the construction of new as well as during the adaptation of existing infrastructure. It is also important to improve services directed towards passenger comfort.

1

Z. Popovic, "Interoperability and standardization of railway infrastructure - integration of Serbian railways", Railway Technical Review, 47, 6-9, Hamburg, Germany, 2007.

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