Railway traffic and sustainable development: measures and recommendations for an effective transport system

This paper considers some basic characteristics and actual processes in domain the railroad transportation in the highly developed country and the condition in railroad compared in Macedonia. Nevertheless, public authorities have high hopes for the railways that could play a key role in achieving a new balance between modes of transport, which is vital to economic development and reducing pollution. To revitalize rail and guarantee its competitiveness, Europe is working on an ambitious plan to "revolutionize" this mode of transport. Global challenges and development and progressive completion of a Trans-European network, as the infrastructure basis for the flows of goods and the free movement of people in the Internal market, remains a vital policy objective for the EU to creating the future Single European Transport Area. To make these transport corridors more effective and sustainable EU should be better encouraged mobility organization in railways sector, in order to promote sustainable development. Rail transport in Macedonia does not meet the traffic conditions and needs. The connection between the cities by rail is quite low, and there was no rail connection with the eastern and western neighbor, Bulgaria and Albania. Transformation in state railroads is necessary to be done which will improve the services in general. In the future we can hope that there will be bigger investments for the development of the railroad transportation, using geographical position and the neighborhood, whish maximize the benefits of these transport model. Key words: sustainable development, rail, traffic patterns, TETM, balanced economic development