Translated material
Day of refusal of municipal transport
Today in Samara, on the initiative of the city administration, Car Abandonment Day will be celebrated for the second time. The next PR campaign of the mayor’s office will be nothing more than a spit in the faces of those citizens who already use public transport.
The event has a noble goal - to force motorists to give up using a personal vehicle at least for a day and switch to a public one. It is based on environmental considerations to limit harmful emissions into the atmosphere. Over time, the action moved from the environmental category to the urban category, when the refusal of personal cars began to be motivated by the need to reduce road congestion.
In Samara, the action is carried out on the initiative of social activists led by Anton Buslov. It was he who convinced the pliable mayor Dmitry Azarov to undertake such a painless PR move for the mayor’s office. Again, there is nothing criminal in the initiative itself. Everyone understands that motorists will not immediately and irrevocably switch to public transport. So this is some kind of long-term educational action. But in Samara it is not supported by anything and, moreover, it will become the second public insult to all those who already use municipal transport.
Getting private car owners to switch to public transport requires more than a one-day advertising campaign. Buslov, in company with his new friends Katz and Varlamov, quite often write about urban transport in Europe, showing us attractive pictures - clean and half-empty rolling stock, running strictly on schedule at short intervals.
It is one thing to attract citizens to use such public transport. Another thing is to transfer people to public transport in Samara - dirty, crowded, running with deviations from sometimes extremely strange schedules and at significant intervals, which does not cover late evening. No sane driver would exchange his car for a stuffy bus, a cold tram, a slow trolleybus and a short metro, unless he is one of the lucky ones for whom public transport is more convenient.
The whole point of the event will come down to PR for the city administration and the appearance of a satisfied mayor in the company of a bunch of officials and journalists passing one stop on a half-empty bus. Only now, first, the TV channel operators will push the passengers into the corners, and then the mayor will get off the bus and transfer to official transport. That's where the celebration ends. Well, not counting the mass of laudatory posts from Buslov and a number of other enthusiastic comrades in local blogs.
On all other days, both the mayor and officials will continue to use exclusively official or personal vehicles. Firstly, they show off. Secondly, they value their time and their comfort. Unlike the time and comfort of ordinary townspeople.
Okay PR. Well, they tried to attract someone. After all, there are rare motorists who sometimes or even often switch to public transport. But you can count them on the fingers of one hand. The problem with the Samara car abandonment day is different.
This problem lies in disrespect for those citizens who have (for a long time) been using this same municipal public transport. Tomorrow, any motorist will be able to ride in municipal transport for free. And ordinary passengers will continue to pay for their travel.
It can’t be called anything other than a spit on all horseless people. It turns out that people who have been paying for public transport services for years do not deserve a day of fare waiver. And motorists who return to drive their car the next day will once again be given a free ride. In Samara, apparently, they don’t like compromises. Of all the forms of incentives for drivers - 50% payment, expanded production of rolling stock, special routes - the ugliest one was chosen.
Therefore, for the second year in a row, I am calling on Samara residents to organize tomorrow a day of abandoning municipal public transport and using exclusively commercial ones. Or choose cycling and walking. Let's give our seats on municipal transport to the mayor and motorists - they need them so much that they can't even find the money to pay for the fare.