Poland will reconstruct the bus station to Austria and Slovakia? There's a petition on this. In August, Deputy Minister Małolebszak will get it.
Unification of public transport concessions, a uniform call search engine utilizing the Slovak cp.sk model, a standardised bus halt base, a fresh strategy for training public transport students based on Western models and improvement of regional bus management like Austria and Slovakia – these are the main requests of a petition to the Minister of Infrastructure, to which passengers have already collected over 200 signatures. The petition will be placed on the desk of Minister Klimczak and Deputy Minister Małolebszak in August.
Initiators hope that the harmonisation of relief and a uniform call search engine will start in 2025. “It’s a tiny change, but it’s easy to introduce and it’s a breakthrough. We want to give the fresh government a chance to be the first to break the bad streak of regional buses. Even in this word we can have PKS as in Slovakia, it's rather real," says Sebastian Kolemba, petition co-initiator and editor of the website We wantRespiration.pl, dedicated to communication exclusion and green protection.
What's with Austria and Slovakia?
These are examples of countries close Poland, where local public transport outside cities (formerly in Poland served by bus stations) functions perfectly and can be a model for Poland. There is no phenomenon of communication exclusion known from Poland, there is simply a comfortable bus (no narrow buses) and the timetable can be easy found on the net and on the app on the phone. The rules of travel are clear to all, and both countries introduce “one ticket for everything” and integrate bus transport with rail. – “While we “can’t” make a common ticket for the Tricity SKM and urban transport in Gdynia and Gdańsk at a reasonable price, Slovaks introduce a common railway-bus fare for full regions and it is much cheaper than ours. That's where we should be, too," explains Sebastian Kolemba.
What is the recipe for Austrian and Slovak success?
First of all, on the low number of public transport operators there, i.e. institutions that set up and subsidise the bus network. Regional public transport in Europe is subsidised, tickets cover only a fraction of the cost. Therefore, in Europe, including Poland, local and regional authorities order and subsidize deficit local connections. If they do not do this or do it wrong, we have a situation known from Poland, where no public transport or narrow buses run 3 times a day and their schedules cannot be found on the Internet. It is worth noting that Poland is in this respect an unpleasant exception. specified a communication exclusion is nowhere else in Europe, the better abroad local transport is not only in Western Europe and in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, but besides in Ukraine and Belarus.
Why is it so bad in Poland?
The reason is the flawed Public Collective Transport Act 2010 – the petitioners believe. The Act dispels work for the organisation and financing of local lines. Depending on the situation, bus transport should organize and finance the municipality, region or voivodship, the effect is that most frequently nobody does. In Poland we have 2,800 regional bus transport organizers. In Austria there are only 6 and in Slovakia there are seven. These are the regions and only the Austrian states, the Slovak self-government countries, which in respective cases combine and form common transport organizers for respective regions (for 3 east regions of Austria and 2 east regions of Slovakia). "In both of these countries, everyone knows who is liable for public transport, the situation is clear and the regions simply do their occupation honestly, due to the fact that they have no dispersal of competence. It is these Austrian and Slovak patterns that we want to introduce in Poland," says Sebastian Kolemba.
In order to introduce successful abroad solutions in Poland, it is besides essential to transfer cognition from these countries and to educate applicable staff in Poland, who know how public transport works abroad. Therefore, the petition besides included requests for student education, sending them to internships and internships to countries with developed public transport and preparing academic textbooks and scripts for students. This task, according to the authors of the petition, should be commissioned by the Ministry of Infrastructure to 2 universities which are subject to this ministry – the Maritime University of Szczecin and the Maritime University of Gdynia, of course, together with adequate funding. It is besides essential to make a labour marketplace for graduates, or no 1 will undertake studies dedicated to abroad solutions in public transport unless there is attractive work after specified studies. And without creating fresh staff from scratch, educated on Western and Slovak models, we will not fight the communication exclusion due to the fact that we will duplicate the same mistakes of the fatal Polish strategy – the petitioners believe.
Petitions besides take into account solutions from Slovakia and Austria, which can be introduced very rapidly and which will immediately have a large effect. This is simply a harmonisation of the bus, rail and water concessions and a single base of stops (also in digital form) which will let for a uniform, universal search engine. In Slovakia, all bus and railway connection can be checked in a universal search engine www.cp.sk, utilizing which you can plan the full trip, along with the train and bus transfers. There are all the connections, besides local ones – this is completely different from the Polish search engine, which only includes railway connections and only any bus connections, mostly long-distance, but will not find local buses.
Deputy Minister Piotr Małolebszak is liable for public transport in the Ministry of Infrastructure. In August, a petition will be placed on his desk, and its authors hope that the Deputy Minister will respond positively to each of the 5 requests and will issue a ruling this autumn to implement them. In this case, we would feel affirmative changes already next year (unification of reductions and uniform search engine) and the Slovak standard of bus stations could be achieved in the first voivodships in this term.
The petition can be signed online under an easy to remember link:
www.petitionionline.com/public transport
We remind you that collective transport, including bus transport, is devoted to the full current issue of the fresh Citizen. You can buy it here:
https://newcietwatel.pl/shop/sklep-quattalnik/newcitizen-4495/
Photo in the text heading: Bus station in the Slovak Nitra, photograph by Remigius Okraska
