Six years ago, the Chisinau City Hall boasted that in 2012 at the latest, the residents of the capital city will not have to buy a ticket from conductors as they will pay for trips by an electronic card. More than four years passed since 2012, when the new system was to be already functional, but electronic ticketing in public transport in Chisinau became an urban myth. The authors of Sic! project developed the issue in an article, IPN reports.
According to the authors, in December 2010, Deputy Mayor of Chisinau Nistor Grozavu said they were working on a feasibility study concerning the new ticketing system. This project is actually not an initiative of the Chisinau City Hall, but rather an obligation that the municipality and the Chisinau Electric Transport Company assumed when signing the lending contract with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The Bank provided a loan of €240,450 for doing reforms during a year and a half.
In January 2011, Mayor General Dorin Chirtoaca already tested one of the buses that were to be outfitted with this system. He planned to even test the use of a turnstile although he was sure that the people will not like the experiment. At the start of 2014, there was announced a new project to introduce paypass cards for paying for trips through electronic terminals installed in trolleybuses.
“What crowned it all was that while presenting his report for this year, Chirtoaca said the implementation of reforms for modernizing the main municipal divisions continues (installation of activity monitoring systems, including GPS, electronic ticketing, approval of contracts for the provision of public services, etc.),” says the Sic! article.
According to the authors, the subject was raised again in March 2015, when it was announced that Dorin Chirtoaca approved the general principles for implementing the electronic ticketing system. “Pay attention, all the earlier announced deadlines weren’t met,” says the article.
In June 2015, the General Public Transport and Communications Division of the Chisinau Municipal Council announced that the project “Implementation of the electronic ticketing system in Chisinau municipality” was close to be finalized. In October of the same year, it became known that the reform not even started to be implemented. Dorin Chirtoaca said then that he didn’t know at what stage the project was and that the Electric Transport Division was responsible for it and this started a mysterious project classed ‘de-parking’. “As if the situation wasn’t enough ridiculous, in May 2016 the press found out that the feasibility study hasn’t been approved by the Municipal Council,” said the article authors.
These conclude that the public transport in Chisinau definitely has more drawbacks besides the failure to set up the electronic ticketing system. At a time when the capital city is being throttled by traffic, the public transport system is underdeveloped and inefficient, far from being as ‘in other cities in Europe’. The problem requires a complex, systemic solution. “If the current mayors need six years to promise and do nothing about a trifle like the electronic ticketing system, can we entrust complex problems on them ?” asked the authors.
The full article in Romanian can be read on sic.md. Sic! is a project implemented by IPN News Agency with support from Soros Foundation Moldova.
