Kyiv will not be able to provide free public transport on its own unless the Ukrainian government compensates the costs. This was stated by the capital’s mayor, Vitalii Klitschko, after President Volodymyr Zelensky tasked the Cabinet with preparing a programme for free travel on surface public transport.
According to Klitschko, maintaining the transport system costs nearly UAH 20 billion. The sum includes expenses for fuel, technical maintenance and employees’ wages.
“If the government comes forward with such proposals, we are ready to implement them, but there must definitely be compensation from the government,” Klitschko said.The mayor added that the city could not shoulder such an expense on its own. He described the initiative as difficult to implement without a clearly identified source of funding and said that Kyiv was ready to discuss it with the state’s participation.
Kyiv is awaiting more than UAH 8 billion in subsidies
Klitschko also pointed to the accumulated debts for transporting passengers entitled to preferential fares. According to him, the Ukrainian state owes Kyiv more than UAH 8 billion in unpaid subsidies accumulated over 11 years.
The capital’s public transport already carries more than 1 million passengers entitled to preferential fares free of charge. The mayor said that these costs should be covered by the state.
“Perhaps the government should first return to Kyiv the subsidy it owes for the free transportation of eligible passengers,” Klitschko said.
Driver shortage hampers the deployment of reserve buses
Zelensky’s initiative also envisages providing a reserve of buses for cases in which the metro is not operating or traffic on the bridges over the Dnipro is disrupted. Klitschko, however, said that the problem was not only the availability of vehicles.
At present, 418 buses serve 129 routes in Kyiv, with 685 drivers working on them. The municipal company “Kyivpastrans” has a further 25 roadworthy buses, but at least 50 drivers with a category D licence are needed to put them into service.
According to the mayor’s estimate, up to 1,020 vehicles would be needed to fully replace the metro with buses. Their movement through traffic jams would be an additional problem.
So far, it has not been announced when the government’s programme will be presented, nor what the mechanism for compensating Kyiv will be. It has also not been reported whether free travel will cover all surface routes or be limited to certain routes and periods.
Sources: kyiv24.news, amp.dw.com, rbc.ua