Penza, 10 September 2012. PenzaNews. The head of Penza administration Roman Chernov described the situation of public transport as “critical,” reporting on the progress in this area at the operational meeting in the regional government on Monday, September 10. “Currently, credit indebtedness of municipal enterprise “Penza passenger transportation” has grown to 225 million rubles. The company is on the verge of bankruptcy despite the fact that we have changed economically reasonable fares and increased budget subsidies by another 32 million rubles,” Roman Chernov said.

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According to him, in this regard, salary payment to the company’s employees was delayed up to five days.

“In June 2012 total revenue decreased by 27% compared to that same span last year, the reason for which was the reconstruction of the road network: the number of units of public transport in Penza decreased by 100. For example, we completely closed three trolley routes, and much of the passenger traffic shifted to small capacity buses, where there is 17% increase,” the head of the city administration informed.

Penza Mayor stressed that the reconstruction of the road network had also led to the fact that the average speed of buses became 6.5 miles per hour, of trolleybuses – 4.3 km per hour.

“In this case, remove the private transport from those streets, where there are problems and make those streets for public transportation and taxis only. In Singapore, for example, taxi drivers were given privileges so that individuals prefer to get to problematic streets by taxi, rather than by private car. After all, a taxi does not need a parking lot – it is in constant motion. Look for options, study the experience of other cities,” the governor of the Penza region Vasily Bochkarev stated.