Fares and Quality of Public Transportation in Almaty

A very long time ago, 8 years back, I took a job at the Zarechnoye joint venture, and while I was head of a department, I got to work either by company shuttle, by taxi, or by public transport. The shuttle picked up other employees along the way, so the trip took very long and I had to leave home much earlier than necessary. It is extremely hard to catch a taxi in the morning, so I started taking trolleybus number seven. The first validators appeared on trolleybuses at that time (all of which later vanished without a trace). The trolleybus took 20 minutes to reach my destination. I always arrived at the stop at the same time. The stop was near my home, and the trolleybus took me right to my workplace. Only new trolleybuses had been purchased then: clean, well maintained, able to run on battery power, and the fare was, I think, KZT 50. It was very convenient.

Many years have passed since then. The fare has risen to KZT 80 over 8 years, which is very little for public transport, considering that the trolleybuses are foreign-made and so are the spare parts (which, after two devaluations, cost more than twice as much). Fuel prices have doubled since then, and the wages of drivers and conductors have risen. In other words, measured against 2009, the financial position of the transport fleets must have deteriorated, and significantly so.

In fact, the fleet has not been renewed much since then, and with such fares, renewing it is very difficult without government subsidies or grants.

I recently rode local public transport in the Czech Republic. A single-ride ticket costs the equivalent of KZT 400. Here, the single-ride fare has now been raised to KZT 150. The buses there are not crowded, and they are new and well maintained. The driver accepts the money, and a validator issues the ticket. While in Europe transport fleets generally do not try to conceal their revenues, in Kazakhstan, alas, there is no such culture. That is why the introduction of the Onay system is, of course, a huge plus for the city. Raising public transport fares is, of course, a sensitive subject, and no one will simply allow it. But it seems to me that we need a differentiated fare system.

At least a higher fare for single-ride tickets has now been introduced. This is quite right, because such an approach will encourage passengers to buy an Onay card right away. Once passengers have a card, they will use public transport more often than informal private taxis.

I would go further still and introduce several types of fares, as well as hourly fares, day passes and so on, with the right to use several modes of transport on a single ticket.

Naturally, to get people to switch to public transport, we need to improve the quality of public transport itself, its service and amenities and, most important of all, adherence to the schedule.

In Europe, a bus arrives to the minute, and if it arrives early, it waits until its scheduled departure time. With the introduction of dedicated public transport lanes, this would make public transport faster than a private car.

I would also propose allowing official taxi drivers, who pay taxes for the right to operate as taxis, to use the public transport lanes. Then those who drive their own cars but do not want to ride buses would gladly use taxis, and unlicensed drivers would be encouraged to come out of the shadows.

Why have I written all this? Probably because a transport collapse begins on September 4, and it will probably last until May 25, 2018.