New passenger minibuses could soon roll on Chisinau roads

As a large part of minibuses, or otherwise known as maxi-taxis, are getting too old to be legally able to carry passengers in Chisinau, carriers are considering alternative solutions. Some say that in 5 or 6 years the entire fleet of minibuses, a very popular form of public transport among Chisinau's residents, could be replaced by vehicles of average and large capacity. One of the considered solutions are Turkey-made Karsan minibuses, which were presented at a ceremony in Chisinau on Saturday. In a promotional move, Karsan company will let Moldovan passenger carriers to test one or two of those vehicles for free for a couple of days and see how they cope with the traffic in Chisinau, “side by side” with the commonly-seen Mercedes Sprinters or older, but still robust Mercedes TNs. Karsan representatives say that unlike the minibuses servicing Chisinau's passengers at present (many of these vehicles were converted from freight vans to do so), their vehicles are built precisely to carry passengers. The number of seats on Karsan minibuses range from 18 to 21, with enough room to transport 8 to 10 in the standing section, as allowed by Moldovan laws. According to Selim Aidinlioglu, sales manager at Karsan, the minibuses have a reduced fuel consumption and feature sliding doors, which makes them very convenient for public transportation when the traffic is busy. In Moldova, a Karsan minibus will have a price tag ranging from 27,000 to 32,000, depending on the equipment line. Such vehicles now operate on roads in Turkey, Ukraine and Romania, the producers say. Attending the event, Mayor Dorin Chirtoaca of Chisinau said that local carriers should think about getting new cars, which would help the public conveyance system modernize. Asked whether the local carriers should consider taking larger vehicles in use, the mayor said that this could be a good solution, provided that a minibus route is administrated by a single operator, because today “competition is acute, I could even say wild”, he added. “When a single operator administrates a route it means stability; otherwise, there is this never-ending pursuit of stealing passengers from each other”. At the same time, Chirtoaca has said that first we must check if the introduction of transport of average and large capacity is profitable, and in this sense, an evaluation of the recently launched route 122 could be relevant. Karsan has a turnover of $207 million and hopes to raise it to $1 billion by 2012. More than 100,000 cars branded Karsan are now operating somewhere in the world.