Maintenance of public railway infrastructure

The maintenance of public railway infrastructure and railway traffic management is a mandatory public utility service, performed by the company Slovenske železnice d. o. o., which is the railway transport operator based on the contract of performing a public utility service.

Public railway infrastructure comprises facilities and devices necessary for undisturbed public railway traffic, and corresponding land for functional use.

The maintenance of public railway infrastructure comprises the performance of:

• maintenance works that preserve normal operational capacity and ensure traffic safety;
• regular maintenance works also include exchange within the scope of maintenance, meaning that the components are replaced during preventive and corrective maintenance with elements with identical function and operations as well as the supervision of sub-systems, ensuring the establishment of transport routes at natural and other accidents, managing registers and records as well as the implementation of measurements of individual parameters or parts of the system;
• rehabilitation of railway infrastructure.

The management of traffic on public railway infrastructure includes particularly:

• train traffic operations,
• implementation of the network timetable,
• technological process implementation at traffic sites,
• supervision of the work of transporters,
• notifying the safety authority on any suspicion of violation caused by the transporter with their conduct that is contradictory to the licence, safety certificate or allocated train route.

The management of public railway infrastructure entails especially:

• the preparation of the proposal of maintenance plan for the existing public railway infrastructure,
• preparation of expert bases for new developmental projects of railway infrastructure,
• concluding legal transaction connected with the public railway infrastructure management and station facilities.

The operator must establish and manage an IT system for rehabilitation or upgrade management of the railway infrastructure.