On April 20-21, the 6th annual conference-exhibition "ITS to Regions" was held in Kaluga at the site of the Innovative Cultural Center. Representatives of the regions and experts discussed not only the issues of digitalization of the transport industry, but also exchanged views on the reform of public transport.
The second day of the forum was opened by the session "Problems of passenger transport and transportation". The speaker from the scientific Institute was the head of the Department of Transport Planning of the FAA "ROSDORNII"Vladimir Pashchenko.
He spoke about the event held within the framework of the NP BCD to update the rolling stock of ground passenger transport and about the approaches that are embedded in the system of selection of applications submitted by the regions within the framework of this event.
It is planned that by the end of 2024, at least 20 urban agglomerations will have the opportunity to purchase trams, trolleybuses and buses at a discount. In 2020-2021, 1,066 vehicles should be delivered to 17 urban agglomerations out of 105 participating in the national project.
On an annual basis, applications are collected from the regions for the renewal of the rolling stock fleet. Federal support is provided using the leasing mechanism — by granting carriers the right to purchase vehicles at a discount of 60 percent of their cost. The remaining amount is attracted by PJSC "GTLK". The rules provide for the purchase of large or extra large class vehicles with 100% low-floor interior. It is also essential to operate them on main routes, which means routes operating from 6 to 23 hours with intervals of no more than 10 minutes during rush hour and no more than 20 minutes the rest of the time.
When considering applications, an assessment of a set of measures aimed at the development of the urban passenger transport system as a whole is carried out, including transport planning documents, the degree of development of gas filling infrastructure and electric transport networks, the availability of cashless fare payment systems and much more. Some regions complain about the complexity of the selection mechanism. However, Vladimir Pashchenko noted that ROSDORNII provides explanations to everyone who needs it and, in addition, initiated some changes to the selection procedure.
"Just yesterday we sent adjustments to the Ministry of Transport, which are designed to simplify the selection of regions somewhat."
As successful examples of changes in the field of public transport, Omsk and Voronezh, which, thanks to their participation in the BCD event, have formed trunk routes, are introducing dedicated lanes and reducing duplication in the route network.
"Despite the fact that the amount of federal support within the framework of our event is relatively small, we are glad that thanks to this work we have started a broad discussion with all regions about the direction in which we need to reform public transport."
The audience was also introduced to the main directions of the implementation of the federal project "Modernization of passenger Transport in urban agglomerations", which has been deployed since 2021 as part of the national BCD project. During the discussion, both the need to expand federal support measures and the steps that the regions are able to take on their own were discussed.