Zelenskiy’s idea of free rides in Kyiv threatens the collapse of the sector

The public organization "Passengers of Kyiv" critically evaluated President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s instruction to the government to introduce free rides on the capital’s public transport, citing a risk of the sector’s collapse.

As Dilo writes, this is stated in the organization’s statement.

The NGO "Passengers of Kyiv" points to the main question: who will make up the shortfall for the “free” transport as Zelenskiy proposes?

After all, introducing free rides on all municipal buses, trolleybuses, and trams in Kyiv would require about 2,2 billion UAH in annual budget compensation. Monthly expenses could be approximately 180 million UAH.

Meanwhile, last year "Kyivpastrans" and the metro each received 1,5 billion UAH in ticket revenue. A further 12 billion UAH amounted in total to subsidies from the city budget.

"And that’s just holding things together. These figures are certainly not about developing public transport," the activists emphasize.

According to them, the Kharkiv example of free rides is achieved by municipal enterprises "simply not paying for the electricity they consume."

"A transport service cannot be free if we want development rather than further decline of the public transport system," the NGO "Passengers of Kyiv" stressed.

They added that so that passengers’ transport expenses would be reasonable and there would be less criticism amid transport problems, the capital’s mayor Vitali Klitschko and the Kyiv City State Administration could have introduced a proper fare structure based on the European principle already in the summer.

At that time the NGO "Passengers of Kyiv" proposed making a monthly pass attractive at 1000 UAH. But the Kyiv City State Administration decided to set an inadequate price of 3680 UAH — because of this, the pass ranks among the TOP-10 most expensive among European capitals.

What is known about the initiative

Earlier, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy instructed the prime minister to present a program of free rides on Kyiv’s ground public transport. The instruction also envisages ensuring a sufficient reserve of buses for the capital.

The initiative is linked to the need to ensure the city’s transport connections in case of metro disruptions and movement restrictions across the Dnipro.

In turn, the capital’s mayor Vitali Klitschko criticized Zelenskiy’s initiative for free rides on Kyiv’s ground transport. According to him, the main problem now is not fare payment but a shortage of drivers and buses, since a full replacement of the metro would require more than a thousand buses.