Let's go in a taxi

Muscovites still couldn’t get used to night buses

The unitary enterprise Mosgortrans, owned by the wealthiest city in Russia, considered it unprofitable to maintain night public transport routes. Despite the fact that the cost of travel on night buses was significantly higher than on daytime ones, transport for night owls only brought losses. And starting from yesterday, late-arriving Muscovites will have to shell out money for a taxi or catch private taxi drivers.

On the last flights on the routes "Garden Ring (outer)" and "Zelenograd - Rechnoy Vokzal metro station" on Sunday night, according to the press secretary of the State Unitary Enterprise "Mosgortrans" Olga Terno, a total of only nine passengers rode. Since August 15, these routes have ceased to exist. These were the last two night buses of the original five that had been plying the capital's pavements since January 2005, picking up night owls from 1 a.m. to 5.30 a.m.

Typically, bus service in the capital is extended by an hour or two only on major state and church holidays such as New Year or Easter. But on the night of January 1, 2005, for the first time, on the initiative of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, special express bus routes were organized by order of the city administration. Apparently, this inspired transport workers to experiment with regular night flights. But the innovation did not last very long.

The first victim of the apparently unsuccessful traffic pattern was the bus route “Lubyanskaya Square - VDNKh metro station” - it was closed after four months, and from July of this year, night bus service on the routes “Kashirskoye Shosse, building 148 - Serpukhovskaya” was closed square" and "inner side of the Garden Ring". Moreover, night city buses were not popular throughout the year and a half of this experiment. “On average, two or three passengers were transported per night, while more than a thousand clients travel along some routes per day,” noted Olga Terno. “So the experiment simply didn’t pay off.” However, vehicles removed from the night shift can replenish the daytime fleet: one or two units of equipment worked on each of the canceled routes.

Perhaps the only time when the innovation was wildly successful was the first launch of the night express, which took place on New Year's Eve, January 1, 2005. It is possible that not only the habit of Muscovites moving from one party to another during the winter holidays was at work here, but also the effect of novelty: the innovation of transport workers was considered by the public to be just another New Year's attraction.

Mosgortrans believes that Muscovites are still not accustomed to this service and prefer to take a taxi. Perhaps the passenger flow was affected by the lack of awareness of the population about the new service; there was no special media plan to “accelerate” the project, and there was no advertising campaign. True, the cost of night city flights, divided into zones, significantly exceeded the daily rate: depending on the flight and the distance to the “on demand” stop, it varied from 11 to 100 rubles. By the way, long-term travel documents and fare benefits were not valid on “dark” routes.

According to the press secretary of Mosgortrans, transport workers did not try to change the pricing policy, “it was a commercial project that was not within the scope of the city order.” They did not try to allow low-capacity buses on these flights. True, transport workers have not ruled out that this fiasco will not stop them and they will continue to develop new proposals for citizens. But the price of the failed experiment was never named.

However, it is possible that organizing profitable night public transport in the capital is impossible in principle. This is also shown by the example of Moscow commercial minibuses, which now not only duplicate almost all ground routes of buses, trolleybuses and trams, but also lay their own well-paying routes where public transport has never gone. But merchants across Moscow stop moving several hours before the last city buses leave for the park. Even cunning private owners in minibuses, whose prices, by the way, are not much higher than municipal prices, have not learned to make a profit from transporting a few midnight passengers. So, apparently, night transport in the capital can only exist as part of a non-profit social project.

Yulia KHOMCHENKO