Packed up to the top minibus, which is on its last legs, they bring fabulous money to the owners, and while they are profitable, statements about the fight against the “gray” market are no more than waves on the water.
Before the country hardly recovered from the terrible road accidents involving minibusses that occurred on July 20, a whole series of accidents with minibusses occurred again. On August 3 – deadly accident in Kyiv: a shuttle minibus right near the city hospital run over an elderly woman, who later died on the operating table. On August 6 – traffic accident on the Zhytomyr highway near Kyiv: on a turn near the village of Chaiky, a bus couldn’t share the road with a truck. Several people were injured. On August 8 – in Melitopol a minibus rolled into a car, people, fortunately, have not suffered. On August 7, there was an accident on the Poltava highway near the gas station WOG: the bus, which collided with a passenger car, overturned. Two people have died, another twenty-three were injured. On August 8 – again an accident involving a minibus, this time in the Dnipropetrovsk region, not far from the village of Pervomayske. 15 people were injured, 6 of them were in the hospital. At the same time, the authorities say that a large number of the road accidents are provoked by minibusses, which operate illegally on the market for passenger transportation. And they promise “to do everything possible” to cope with the problem. And they have been promising it for many years.
On July 30, we wrote about the promises and plans of various power structures that promised to streamline the number of the passenger transportation market in Ukraine, in the article “Increased responsibility: developed measures to improve road safety”. But, as they say, you can quickly tell a story, but you cannot do anything quickly.
Every weekend I have to travel by the roads of Kyiv region, and if it was still difficult to see anyone even at the checkpoint of the former State Traffic Police station near Odesa Square (towards Odesa), last Sunday there was one such crew, but for some reason only on one side – in front of Chabany, towards the entrance to the capital. It was not shuttle buses or minibusses, which they stopped at that time – the guys just nicely communicate with each other.
Therefore, the police are now really patrolling the roads together with the employees of the State Service for Transport Security. As DUMKA was informed in the press service of “Uktransbezpeka”, over 12,000 buses and minibusses were checked during the intensive regime of joint operations with the National Police, and 3,964 violations were recorded. Most often, drivers don’t have the full range of documents provided for in the thirty-ninth article on road transport. Among all checked, they found 1,354 of that kind or slightly more than 34%. Violation of the regime of work and rest, frankly sleepy drivers, is in another 935 cases (23.5%), the unsatisfactory technical condition of minibusses that transport people – 563 (slightly more than 14%). The remaining violations (and this is 1,112 cases, recorded by the Police) account for 28%.
The offices are reporting, but the car is made of scrap metal
And the problems remained the same: the share of the passenger transportation market, which is already in the shadow for more than one year, according to some estimates, is 40-50%, while according to others it reaches 80-90%. Experts say: everything depends on the region. Somewhere, as in Sumy, there are more, and somewhere, for example, in Khmelnytskyy, there are less. The worst thing is when a bus, which crumbles on the move, goes to the route with this very sleepy driver behind the wheel. Well, it is good if this minibus just stops, and if the braking system goes out?
Minister of Infrastructure Volodymyr Omelyan promised that from the next year we won’t see this old trash converted from trucks on the roads. But will it not be another promise that will remain only a promise? After all, so far only a small fraction of the judicial proceedings of materials on such violations, prepared by the inspectors, are being completed in favor of the state: why the judges don’t see violations, especially in the case of a dispute, regular or irregular transportation (the license is used by the latter “gray” carriers to cover up their activities).
It has long been no secret that minibusses – both urban and intercity, are crowded, and behind the wheel are sleepy almost Formula 1 drivers. And the style of their driving, when the drivers of shuttle minibusses literally cut the cars off, is also a well-known fact, even though it’s hard to believe that the Police always notice such drivers on time. Monitoring the information space after the “Black Friday”, I stumbled upon the post of Olha Chayko in the social network, I will quote a piece because one cannot say it better. So, “… the minibus is holding almost because of the tape. On the floor, there is linoleum, like my neighbors had in the apartment before they immigrated to Canada in the mid-90’s. Seats are upholstered with plush – from those times. Doors are from the remains of scrap metal and all the minibus can boast of the details from a number of its ancestor. But it’s still on its way.
The people – mostly with children, which are sitting on other people’s knees, just like bags and other belongings. On bright cues, the bus explodes with amicable laughter. Because here either to eat each other or to fraternize for about 40 minutes. Firstly, they sympathize a woman with a pinched hand. Give water to a girl, which vomited from such a journey. Together they curse the driver that he took superfluous people, then, just as amicably, he is justified by the scream of the smart conductor: “The third beach! Are you going out or not?”
Likewise, it is in intercity transport. About the solid checks on the roads, they heard here, because at the entrance to the city the driver asks the passengers to double up: that those, who stand, wouldn’t have been noticed by the police patrol. Regions live their bright life. The offices report on mass inspections, future GPS-navigators and the renewal of rolling stock”.
They are used to “sort the things out”
And – again, on Facebook, the spokeswoman for Ukrtransbezpeka, Liliya Gabriel-Tkachuk, explained that, first of all, it shows that the problem is very old. “Do we like when we are passengers of public transport, to go in a shabby minibus, with dirty torn seats, when the legs, to fit somehow, reach almost your chin? — Mrs. Liliya asks. — Obviously not”. But the owners of these minibusses are used to “sort the things out” in Kyiv, and nobody tells them what to do. But when they are told that it will continue to be so, that they either need to acquire the appropriate quality and comfort class of the minibus or leave the market, they go to pickets, telling that the bread is taken away from them. So, they must feed their children. But do we want our children to go to such minibusses, in which the wheels fly off on the run?”
It is reported from the places that the checks, promised by the same “cabinets”, when the drivers are being shaken, like a pear, did not go everywhere. For example, not immediately inspectors took up Bahmut carriers. And who is “unlucky”, then they check not only the technical condition of buses or minibuses but also the availability of all permits (a license is not everything), but also confirmation that there was a driver’s review for going to the route (state of health and, as drivers themselves say, for “alcohol”), the presence of a first aid kit and a fire extinguisher in the cabin. Drivers, working on local routes complain that “illegal carriers have not been touched before, and now they do not touch them”. And many of them, they say, is on the road to the Mayor checkpoint. The owner of one of the trucking enterprises assumes that “the drivers, when the police stopped the minibusses, give bribes”.
Carriers-illegals are almost everywhere. If you ask the officials, where most of all, they say: in Sumy. However, those entrepreneurs, who legally work in the area of intercity passenger transportation, specify that there are especially many of their “gray” competitors in the south of the country, as well as in the east, where they cross the line of demarcation. There are cases when competition goes into an absolutely unacceptable plane: they set fire to minibusses of those, who work legally, intimidate and even beat people. For example, in summer 2016, someone set fire to up to 6 buses of the Mykolayiv firm, which won a tender for servicing the resort area to Koblevo and Odesa. We failed to find information that the arsonists were found and punished.
Bus stations-clones and “right” officials
Meanwhile, representatives of the legal market share point out that more than half of the financial flows of the passenger transportation market are often in the hands of illegal competitors. In Mykolayiv region, in the same Sumy region, in its own way does not lag behind Odesa region, in which illegals have “a common language” with their legal colleagues, and now it is very difficult to fix those, who work outside the legal field. And although passengers do not particularly suffer there, such activities damage the economy as a whole.
Most of the illegal immigrants are in Rivne and Poltava regions. Usually, they equip their “bus stations” where it is convenient for passengers, or – in the case of frank impudence – bus stations-clones near the legal ones. And then, thanks to the “right officials”, they receive certification, they even put a cash register and give people tickets for the bus. However, not all, but only 10-20% and the rest dodge the fare. Their money at the same time “goes” in the pockets of the organizers of this business and their “protection”. If this business still does not just stay afloat, but flourishes, we can assume that the incomes of both the first and second are far from modest.
“Among us in the market of transportation, there are carriers and drivers with a high degree of risk. In fact, their numerous violations remain outside the fixation for imperfect legislation and through especially great corruption, but they are the ones that are threatening and cause tragic consequences and the work of controlling and law enforcement bodies should only be concentrated on them in order to withdraw potential killers from the market and traffic”. Iryna Shpylyova, the Chairman of the Union of Passenger Carriers of Ukraine, notes in the commentary for DUMKA.
The union believes that the situation can save only a fully automated system when everything will be tied to the activities of GPS-trackers, the information from which will come to the control centers. And without such a device, Iryna Shpylyova explains, a license should not be issued – and then without it there should not be a single bus or minibus on the route.
Shpylyova explains: “We do not need to reinvent the wheel when the entire civilized world has been working with an automated system for a long time. And we, too, will not control the market without an automated system”. But, besides this, traffic schedules and convenient places for bus stations and convenient stops are important for people. The local authorities are engaged in the network in every area. Therefore, it is not difficult to guess where the “legs” of the “gray” market of passenger traffic. The legal market operates within the limits that the customer of services determines for them. And illegal carriers quickly occupy a niche, if for some reason it is empty (or someone does it specifically).
The head of the union explains: “Otherwise, but so far, the points, where illegal carriers are milled, we have everywhere. Most often – in the area of railway stations. And why? Because it is there that there is a need for transportation: a person wants to take a bus from a train station, then why do not you give such an opportunity? There is a demand – let’s offer. And the bus stations are set up God knows where – somewhere on the road…” That is, in this case, everything depends on the problem of state regulation. Buses must travel on a convenient for the passengers schedule, and not when it is “convenient” to officials, should be taken into account convenient points of transplantation and the like.
“Gray” pay 1,700 UAH, illegals – from 17,000 UAH
In Ukrtransbezpeka, as well as in the Union of Passenger Carriers, it is also believed that the presence of such a large segment of the market for passenger transportation, which falls on the “gray” or even the “black” zone, is possible due to the fact that the current legislation in Ukraine on the automobile transport does not correspond to the European one. An insignificant responsibility of carrier-violators, which in turn leads to a sense of impunity and encourages them to continue to grossly neglect the requirements of the law.
Vyacheslav Didkivsky, the Acting Chairman of the State Service of Ukraine for Transport Security, explains: “If the carrier, for example, works without a full set of documents, it faces a fine of 100 non-taxable minimum incomes of citizens, that is, 1,700 UAH. And if it concerns the conduct of economic activities without registration of a business entity and the absence of a license, this is already Article 164 of the Code of Administrative Violations, then, the amounts of fines here are different, ranging from 17,000 to 34,000 UAH, with possible confiscation of vehicles. That is, if there are no permits, you risk being left without buses, which transported people”.
But, despite all the promises, the right words and good intentions, no matter how much do the authorities fight with illegal carriers, they don’t feel bad. And they are not in a hurry to leave the market: they hope that the storm will pass away, and again the sun will look out. What does this mean? Only that they have a good “protection”, good “roof”, with which neither snow nor rain is scary. Or, gentlemen officials, this time everything will be different?
Text by Larysa Vyshynska
