Mosgortrans
Mosgortrans ( Russian Мосгортранс ) is a state-owned Russian transport company that operates a large part of the local public transport in Moscow . The company, which has been organized as a company since 1958, handles all tram , bus and trolley bus operations in the Russian capital . On the other hand, the Metro , which is an independent transport company, and the inner-city railway network, which belongs to the Russian Railways , are not operated by Mosgortrans .
history
Mosgortrans was formed on July 31, 1958 by decision of the Moscow City Council. The newly established organization, which was originally called the Moscow Public Transport Administration ( Управление пассажирского транспорта Москвы ) replaced two previously separate organizations that were responsible for bus traffic on the one hand and trolleybus and tram traffic on the other. With this re-establishment, the largest urban transport company in the former Soviet Union was created . In 1960, the means of transport managed by Mosgortrans carried a total of 2.669 billion passengers; the vehicle fleet consisted of 1776 trams, 1360 trolley buses and 2665 buses.
In the 1990s, in the wake of the economic decline after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mosgortrans got into a serious financial crisis, which made it impossible to keep the quality of passenger transport at a satisfactory level. During this time, only a few new vehicles were procured, which led to a considerable obsolescence of the vehicle fleet and increased susceptibility to disruption of the above-ground Moscow public transport. It was not until the late 1990s that the financial problems were partially resolved. In this way, it was possible to secure the income that had been lost up to then by numerous fare dodgers through the installation of turnstiles at the entrance doors of trams, trolleybuses and buses in the early 2000s, which made a partial renewal of the vehicle fleet possible. However, in connection with the installation of the turnstiles, Mosgortrans has also come under public criticism several times, as this leads to considerable delays in passenger changes, especially on heavily used lines.
Current dates
As of the end of 2006, Mosgortrans is the largest urban transport company in Russia and transports around 4.2 billion passengers a year, which corresponds to around 47 percent of the total urban volume. Up to 5800 vehicles are in use every day. The vehicle fleet is divided into a total of 17 bus depots, seven trolleybus depots, a combined depot for trolley and buses and five tram depots.
Standard tickets are sold for transport by buses, trolley buses and trams. As of 2010, the fare for a single trip is 24 rubles (the equivalent of around 0.65 euros), which is slightly cheaper than a single ticket for the metro (26 rubles). In addition, multi-trip tickets are available for 5, 10, 20 or 60 trips. A special feature here is that it is possible to purchase a ticket from the driver, but at 28 rubles per single trip it is significantly more expensive than buying it at one of the special kiosks, which are not available at every stop. This pricing policy is justified by the Moscow city administration, contrary to multiple criticism, by stating that ticket sales by drivers should remain an exception, as it delays the change of passengers at stops.
Means of transport
Bus
Bus traffic has existed in the Russian capital since 1907 and today, with over 530 lines, is the most important above-ground public transport. The main area of application of the buses is the outskirts, where they mostly serve as the main feeder of the metro . The schedule is between five and 25 minutes, depending on the time and the load on the line; a few lines only run at certain times, which in this case are indicated by a timetable at stops. The vehicle fleet consists largely of single and, more rarely, articulated double cars from the Russian LiAZ plants from the 1990s and 2000s, but also of Ikarus articulated buses from the 1980s and early 1990s. In recent years, low-floor buses have also been used increasingly .
Trolleybus
The former Moscow trolleybus network had existed since 1933 with the LK-1 and was in the meantime the largest of its kind in the world. In contrast to buses, Moscow trolleybuses mainly ran in the city center and on major arterial roads. Since the establishment of new trolleybus routes is considerably more complex than the introduction of new bus routes due to the need to relocate the catenary, almost all existing routes were shut down by mid-2020, new routes are no longer planned. With the exception of one museum line, the Moscow trolleybus has been shut down since August 25th.
The last trolleybuses used for Moscow were manufactured by the Trolsa works in the Volga city of Engels . A wide range of different models was in use at Mosgortrans, ranging from the SiU-9 model developed in 1972 and still widely used by the ex-Soviet trolleybus operators to modern low-floor vehicles.
The Mosgortrans bus and trolleybus routes are numbered with one or two digits, and many bus routes also have three digits. The bus and trolley bus routes sometimes have identical numbers. The trolleybus ring line Б (the Cyrillic letter "B"), which runs on the garden ring , was a specialty . Short repeater lines, in turn, had a red line number .
The current mayor of Moscow, Sergei Semjonowitsch Sobyanin , spoke out against the trolleybus in the Russian capital when he took office in 2010. As a result, he initiated an extensive wave of decommissioning from 2014 in order to replace the entire Moscow trolleybus system with newly procured battery buses. The last trolleybus trips on the remaining lines M4, 28, 59, 60, 64 and 72 took place on the evening of August 25, 2020. This marked the end of the important chapter of the trolleybus in Moscow after 77 years.
tram
The electric tram has existed in Moscow since 1899, making it the city's oldest public transport. In 2007 the network consisted of 37 lines on a total of just over 200 kilometers of track. Both single and double traction types Tatra T3 , KTM-8 and KTM-19 are used . Over the past few decades, the Moscow tram has steadily lost its importance among all means of transport in the city; almost all routes in the historic city center have now been closed and some have been replaced by bus or trolleybus routes. Several stretches on important arterial roads have recently been completely or partially dismantled in order to create additional space for the ever-increasing car traffic. While “traditional” tram routes are permanently threatened with closure, there have recently been plans for some light rail routes . These should relieve the trolleybus and bus traffic in its function as a metro feeder in certain outskirts.
Web links
- official website (Russian)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Vedomosti newspaper: Moscow almost completely dispenses with trolleybuses. August 25, 2020, accessed August 28, 2020 (Russian).
- ↑ https://www.vedomosti.ru/society/news/2020/08/25/837660-moskva-otkazhetsya-ot-trolleibusov