Few letters

Experts propose changing the standard of registration plates for cars

Yesterday, Senator from Karelia Vladimir Fedorov, who previously headed the state traffic inspectorate, proposed depriving his former subordinates of one of the sources of illegal income. Apparently, remembering the number of requests asking for car registration plates of a certain series that came to his office when he was the head of the traffic police, Mr. Fedorov considers it possible to put the process of distributing “beautiful” license plates on an official commercial footing. And the income from this should be directed not into the pockets of the heads of the MREO, but officially into the treasury. “If you want the 777 series, pay and drive,” Mr. Fedorov said at a press conference at RIA Novosti, proposing that the government take into account “our motorists’ love for certain series and combinations” and set prices for particularly popular combinations of letters and numbers.

The senator referred to the experience of foreign countries that practice both the trade in registration plates with “beautiful” numbers and the sale of “nominal” plates. The world record for the cost of a license plate so far belongs to the Abu Dhabi traffic police, where Saudi businessman Talal Khoury paid more than 5 million euros for a sign with just one digit “5,” exceeding the previous “achievement” tenfold. Previously, the record holders for entrepreneurship were considered to be policemen from Yorkshire, England, who sold the “M1” number for almost half a million euros.

However, in Russia, the question of the need to introduce new approaches to the distribution of registration plates arose not so much from the beautiful life of individual citizens, but from the miscalculations of the drafters of GOST, introduced in 1994 and determining that the combination on car license plates should consist of three letters and three numbers plus area code. At that time, no one expected that the vehicle fleet, as well as the number of transactions for the purchase and sale of cars, which included re-registration with the traffic police and obtaining new license plates, would grow at a rapid pace and that the built-in reserve in a number of regions would be exhausted in just 15 years. In particular, according to experts, Moscow, where the number of cars is increasing at the fastest pace, will not be able to issue license plates in their current form by 2010.

As the head of the Znak group of companies, Valery Ponomarev, said yesterday, each subsequent batch of numbers with a new code produced by his company ends much faster than the previous one. Although the number of characters themselves remains unchanged - 1 million 728 thousand for each new code. Registration plates with the code “77 RUS” lasted for almost five years, with the code “99 RUS” - for three and a half years, plates with the code “97 RUS” were issued for three years. A new series launched in Moscow in the summer of 2005 with an unusual three-digit region code “177 RUS”, according to him, is already running out. “The last code was exhausted in just two years and three months,” Mr. Ponomarev complained, suggesting that the next series would last, at best, one year and eight months.

Trying to somehow extend the life of the current batch of registration plates, the heads of the traffic police have already allowed car owners to rearrange their license plates from deregistered cars to newly purchased cars. However, this operation in practice often turns out to be impracticable - registration actions for deregistration and registration are not always carried out by the same MREO, inspectors do not want to deal with sending signs and, moreover, sometimes ask motorists to document their financial situation, not allowing you to pay for a new number.

It is precisely because the scheme for preserving the old number has not yet become widespread that experts are looking for new options for solving a significant problem. Senator Vladimir Fedorov understands that his proposal to sell “beautiful” numbers will not fundamentally solve the problem either, and therefore, in parallel, together with specialists, he puts forward another initiative - to create a working group to study the possibility of revising the old GOST. In order to maintain the pan-European standard for the size of the state registration plate, add another letter to it. According to experts, this will significantly increase the growth reserve of the Russian vehicle fleet. “By adding just one letter to the number series, it will be possible to increase the number of characters by 20 million,” assures Valery Ponomarev.

Fedor SEREBRYANSKY