Freight-Traffic Density

of a railroad line, an indicator of the intensity of use of a railroad network. The magnitude of freight-traffic density is measured by the amount of ton-kilometers per kilometer (ton-km/km) of operational railroad line (the operational length of the USSR’s railroads excludes the lengths of secondary or tertiary main or railroad station track). The freight-traffic capacity can also be measured by the tons of freight that have passed through an arbitrary point of a railroad network during a specified period of time. The average freight-traffic density on the USSR’s railroads during the postwar years increased more than four times from 4.3 million ton-km/km in 1940 to 18.5 million ton-km/km in 1970. On some of the network’s rail lines the average freight-traffic density varies between 1 and 70 million ton-km/km and more. The average freight-traffic density of the rail network in the USA during 1968 was 3.5 million ton-km/km, in the Federal Republic of Germany the figure was 2 million ton-km/km, and in France it was 1.7 million ton-km/km, that is, five to ten times less than in the USSR. The freight-traffic density indicator may also be applied to other land or water transport lines.