Bosnia and Herzegovina's railways still neglected 30 years after war

"The main problem with railway infrastructure is not technical but political. Politics, at all levels, simply does not see the railways as having potential, which is why there has been no investment in the last thirty years," Forto said at a conference on the state of the country's railways in Sarajevo.

Since the war, no investments have been made in the railway network in BiH, except for the line between Sarajevo and Mostar, which was reconstructed. As a result, trains in the country run at average speeds below 40 kilometres per hour, and Bosnia and Herzegovina has no regular international rail connections.

The only exceptions are part of freight traffic with Croatia via the port of Ploče, supplying raw materials to the steel plant in Zenica and the coke processing factory near Tuzla, as well as seasonal passenger trains operating from Sarajevo to Ploče during the summer weekends.

Another challenge is that the Dayton Agreement left railway management to the entities, with plans for a state-level corporation to coordinate operations, which never materialised.

Officials from the Railways of the Federation of BiH previously explained that plans for passenger trains to Zagreb failed because they could not reach an agreement with the Railways of Republika Srpska to avoid changing locomotives at the entity border, prolonging travel times and making the service unattractive.

Esref Gacanin, head of an association of transport engineers in the Federation of BiH, warned at the Sarajevo event that such a situation cannot continue, noting that the EU strongly encourages the development of high-speed rail connections. "If we want to join the EU, we must apply their standards, which regulate everything from management, operators, and maintenance to infrastructure," he said.

Velibor Peulic, head of the "Logistika BiH" association representing transport operators in the country, told Fena news agency that in 2024, less than 2% of the approximately 25,000 containers entering BiH were transported by rail.

Peulic suggested that freight transport should be organised through an intermodal approach, combining different modes of transport with trains playing the central role. This would rely primarily on Croatia's railway network, connecting northern BiH to the port of Rijeka and southern BiH to the port of Ploče.

"This requires coordination between the entities, the state, and support from the EU," he added.