LEGAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL PRINCIPLES OF ENSURING SAFETY IN RAILWAY TRANSPORT UNDER MARTIAL LAW

Abstract

This article examines the legal and organizational foundations for ensuring safety in rail transport during armed conflict. It outlines the nature of the challenges that negatively impact the assurance and management of rail traffic safety, namely ongoing hostilities that destroy railway infrastructure, a shortage of qualified personnel, disruptions to logistical links, significant wear and tear on rolling stock and fixed assets, low investment attractiveness, and a lack of internal financial resources to implement innovative ideas. The study analyzes legislative and regulatory acts that facilitate the implementation of legal norms and standards ensuring traffic safety and reveal the characteristics of organizational and management cycles at railway transport enterprises. The paper describes specific legal norms and standards of the Law of Ukraine “On Safety and Interoperability in Ukrainian Rail Transport” and the Order of the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine “Regulations on the Rail Traffic Safety Management System.” Attention is drawn to the specifics of how the organizational mechanism for safety management in rail transport functions in today’s reality. The author presents his vision of the essential nature of the organizational mechanism for managing safety in rail transport as a conceptual category, defined as a set of methods and techniques employed by the administrative apparatus and civil servants of Ukrtransbezpeka to coordinate, manage, and safeguard the uninterrupted operation of the railway transportation system, based on legal norms and standards, rules, and procedures that promote the safety of passenger and freight transportation, prevent accidents, and minimize any operational risks, taking into account the close interconnection of the principles and functions of the traffic safety system, under emergency operating conditions at railway transport enterprises. The advantages are identified and the feasibility of modernizing the essential characteristics of the organizational mechanism for managing railway safety in the context of the military conflict in Ukraine is substantiated. Directions for strengthening safety at railway transport enterprises are proposed, based on the active implementation of EU legal norms and standards, digitalization tools, and the latest technologies capable of improving the quality and effectiveness of organizational and management cycles