Urgent, expensive and often unpopular solutions are needed - otherwise even the maintenance of existing public transport will soon be impossible, let alone development. This is one of the main common theses from various participants of the round table, organized by the "Center of Transport Strategies" together with the NGO "Vision Zero" . It was attended by representatives of Ukrainian manufacturers of public transport and its infrastructure, specialized industry experts, public activists and some representatives of authorities related to the topic of public transport.

For example, Volodymyr Budzan, commercial director of "Electronmash" , said that often after the delivery of trams in accordance with the contract, they have to wait half a year for payment for their products from an international donor, who provides the city of Lviv with a loan for the purchase of trams. This negatively affects the work of the enterprise, significantly inhibiting further production.

Dmytro Bespalov, lecturer of KNUBA, director of the company "ProMobility" said that public transport is the basis of the economy. Upgrading rolling stock is important, but infrastructure is more important, because infrastructure upgrades can provide more localization of products and more jobs.

The thesis about the importance of transport infrastructure was further developed by Pavlo Savtsov, head of sales in the areas of urban electric transport and metro at PJSC "Pluton" . For the most part, the cities of Ukraine, which before the full-scale war massively updated the various rolling stock of electric transport, most often did not update the infrastructure before it (railways, substations, contact network, etc.). And if they are already updated, then it is quite spot-on, when a serious failure of certain components occurs. This approach needs to change, as the new trolleybuses and trams will quickly turn into the same ones that ran 10 years ago.

Another considerable, in fact the main problem of organizing the work of urban public transport is its financing. Often, deputies, mayors or heads of communal enterprises believe that municipal carriers should not be unprofitable, but profitable. At the same time, forgetting that their only source of income is the sale of tickets to pay for travel. Demyan Danilyuk, an expert on public transport from the NGO Vision Zero , claims that the government should adopt a special program for the development of public transport, and the parliament should vote for it in the state budget. It would support the purchase of rolling stock at the expense of the state and local budgets, and the cities, in return, would have to take loans from international financial organizations to modernize the infrastructure. Our cities will not be able to make progress on their own, and this sector will continue to decline.

You can read more opinions expressed by all the participants of the round table in the material of the Center for Transport Strategies.