SAFE COMFORT

"An advanced city is not a place where the poor move about in cars, rather it's where even the rich use public transportation". This pretty plausible statement was made by Enrique Penalosa, the renowned urbanist and mayor of the Colombian capital Bogota. The world's urban planning practices show that the development of modern-day megalopolises is just impossible without a well-developed network of public transportation with its different modes and routes tightly connected within one mechanism.

Unfortunately, this sphere is still one of the most painful and slowly resolved problems in Baku. All the more so as the need for public transportation grows essentially as the Azerbaijani capital's population grows and permanent processes go on related to city development, expansion of its boundaries and construction of new housing estates and settlements. According to data from the State Statistics Committee of Azerbaijan, in January-July, the country's passenger transport carried 1bn people, which is an increase of 5 per cent on the same period in 2013. The bulk of the passengers were carried by motor vehicles (87.4 per cent) and the underground (12.3 per cent).

The crush of people in the underground, the only transport in the city running to schedule, often makes many passengers resort to surface transport. But travelling by urban buses is not much fun today as the process is not only uncomfortable and tiresome but sometimes also dangerous.

Drivers lacking experience and frequently and grossly violation of traffic rules and speeding often cause traffic accident on the capital's roads. Currently Azerbaijan's transport system is undergoing change and adjustment during which it is very important to ensure safety for urban transport passengers. It is a pretty urgent task to step up control kin view of the new school year started in this country.

It must be admitted that the Transport Ministry takes regular preventive efforts against bus drivers' careless attitudes and to ensure passenger safety. A case in point is recently toughened control over businessmen operating bus routes in Baku. Thus for instance it is planned to hold spot checks and use mobile stations to monitor the operation of passenger transport in Baku streets in keeping with established requirements to drivers and their skills, the technical condition of the buses and observance of safety rules.

If serious faults are revealed in the operation of bus routes, tough measures are taken against their owners, up to suspending the carrier from work in this sector, said Namiq Hasanov running the public relations department at the Transport Ministry.

In addition, in the near future, surveillance cameras will be installed in Baku's buses, which will allow the behavior of drivers and the situation inside the bus to be controlled from the command center.

However, not everything can be reduced to the human factor. The technical condition of the buses is also important. Currently many buses running along the capital's streets are technically out of date. They are also unfit in terms of comfort (worn-out seat covers, sometime the very seats are missing and many other problems). In this context, it is important to replenish the capital's bus fleet giving preference to manufacturers providing higher quality.

Thus several hundred new buses will be brought to the capital during this autumn as part of efforts to enhance the quality of passenger traffic by public transport. This will in turn make it possible to replace some worn-out vehicles with new ones that are more up to date and of higher quality. Some advantages of the new low-floor busesinclude the fact that they are designed to transport people with disabilities in comfort and safety, as they are equipped with special wheelchair ramps. These vehicles are also equipped with automatic transmission, air conditioning, andcan seat 26 people. Currently there are about 2,500 buses functioning in the capital. According to the State Statistics Committee, 167 buses worth about 8m dollars were imported to Azerbaijan in the first half of 2014.

Alongside this, a sweeping switch to pay cards will also contribute to improving the quality of urban transport services. Such cards will not only minimize passenger-driver contacts but also lead to giving up the current system where drivers' wages depend on target fulfillment and switching over to fixed salaries. In pursuit of gain, drivers of passenger buses sometimes jeopardize both their own life and the lives of dozens passengers. Their wish to earn extra money by speeding along the wrong side of the road will become a thing of the past when fixed salaries have been introduced. 

The system for handling bus fares in Baku will be completely switched to the card system by 1 March 2015. According to Deputy Transport Minister Musa Panahov, these cards can soon be used to pay the fare to ride the Baku Metro, and in the future could be used to pay taxi fares. "Currently, work is being done in order to allow the use of the transport cards in the metro," said the deputy minister.

Ways to improve the operation of public transport in Baku are also discussed from time to time with foreign specialists and financial institutions. In particular, a group of consultants from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) led by city planning expert David Morgenstern recently arrived in Baku to continue consultations with the Azerbaijani side under a project to provide technical aid worth 925,000 dollars allocated in 2012 to support the transport card project and a sustainable transport investment programme for the Azeri capital. At a meeting at the Transport Ministry chaired by Deputy Minister Musa Panahov , the sides discussed a strategy to improve the public transport situation in Baku, efforts to develop inner-city railway transport, renovate the city's bus system, establish a rapid bus mass transit system and control of bus stops, improve the capital's road network and major road junctions. The ministry will draw up its final report within the programme being developed in December 2014.

Stepping up safety efforts, replacement of buses, phasing in the new payment system - all these measures will make it possible to improve the city transport system, make the passenger traffic process more coordinated and enhance its quality so that the time spent aboard a bus is a good beginning of the day rather than a torture.