Ukrainian NGOs are looking for 750 buses for 80 communities from Europe
Trostyanets, Sumy Oblast, has already received used buses, but needs more. (Photo: Trostyanets City Council)
80 city, town and village communities from 23 regions of Ukraine are in urgent need of used buses as humanitarian aid. The total number of buses they need for the next 12 months is 744 units. These are the results of the first stage of the Buses for Ukraine initiative, which was founded by the NGO Vision Zero and the Association of Energy Efficient Cities of Ukraine (EECU).
Eight regional centers have expressed a need for additional buses: Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv, Poltava, Rivne, Chernivtsi, and Lviv, which have expressed their readiness to take 428 buses into operation. These cities mainly need standard (12 meters long) or extended (18 meters long) buses to strengthen the transport offer on bus routes and as replacement transport for days or weeks of energy restrictions, to temporarily serve tram or trolleybus routes, or even to duplicate subway lines.
However, most of the questionnaires came from small and medium-sized communities. Some of them already have operating transport utilities and aim to strengthen their work. For example, these are Konotop, Trostianets, Chortkiv, Boyarka, Bucha, Kostopil, Haivoron, Horodok, Vyzhnytsia, and Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi.
Half of the applications (41) came from even smaller communities with a population of one thousand to 25 thousand people, these are village and settlement communities. Based on communication with village and settlement heads, the authors assess the transportation situation in rural communities as critical. "Many people in villages have lost the ability to get to the center of the community because private carriers refuse to operate bus routes. Community heads are looking for opportunities to get one or two small class buses from abroad to provide at least social transportation, for example, once a day or once a week,” comments Viktor Zagreba, chairman of the board of the NGO Vision Zero and founder of the Buses for Ukraine initiative.
The project initiating organizations generally support the development of electric public transport, as it is the most climate-friendly and causes the least air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. However, in wartime, the initiators consider buses to be a necessary and justified solution, even though they consume diesel fuel or natural gas. "Getting and using used buses is in line with the principles of sustainable urban mobility and the realities of the situation in Ukraine. First, any public transportation is better for the climate and for cities than non-public transportation - private cars. Transporting people by bus causes about half as many emissions per person-kilometer as by car. The second is the energy crisis. In the face of aggression against our energy system, constant restrictions and blackouts, cities increasingly need buses as a substitute transport, as the use of electric transport may not be possible for significant periods of time. Thirdly, cities also need to replace buses destroyed by missile strikes on cities,” said Svyatoslav Pavliuk, Executive Director of the Association of Energy Efficient Cities of Ukraine.
Lviv and other regional centers need 428 additional buses to adapt to power restrictions and blackouts (Photo by O. Shutyuk)
The organizers of the initiative believe that the technical aspect is important, so that cities receive buses that they can use and repair effectively. "Many cities have already received used buses from the EU, but they are often of different sizes, different manufacturers, and in different conditions. This is especially sensitive for small and medium-sized communities: if a city receives 10 buses, including 3 Mercedes, 2 MANs, 2 Solaris, 2 Volvo and 1 Irisbus, the problem with maintaining such a fleet will arise very quickly, as these buses differ in everything and maintaining a spare parts stock is almost impossible,” comments Anton Gagen, an expert at Vision Zero and co-coordinator of the Buses for Ukraine initiative.
The next stage of the initiative is to search for and select working used buses for Ukrainian communities. For this purpose, the organizations have already contacted several city associations and transport associations, and are also looking for contacts with associations and pro-Ukrainian NGOs in the European Community that can take on the role of local representatives of the initiative.
Civil society organizations are aware of the need to change the legislation to remove the current formal restrictions on the use of buses received as humanitarian aid on regular routes. This problem was included in the list of urgent recommendations developed with the cities and submitted to the Cabinet of Ministers and the Verkhovna Rada, and the relevant draft law has already been developed and registered by Ukrainian MPs. The initiators are also aware that humanitarian buses for cities are a temporary solution that does not eliminate the need for systemic reforms in the transport sector, in particular, the fulfillment of Ukraine's overdue obligation to implement European Commission Regulation 1370/2007 on public services of passenger transport by rail and road into Ukrainian legislation. “This overdue reform will allow cities to adopt the principles of public transport financing common to the EU and pave the way for multibillion-dollar private investments in this industry, including new rolling stock,” the organizers summarize.
As a reminder, according to a sociological survey, almost 51% of households in Ukraine do not own a single car. The largest number of car-free households was recorded in the East of the country - 57.2%, and the smallest number - 39.4% - in the West. The survey was conducted by the Info Sapiens research agency in January 2024 at the request of the NGO Vision Zero.
***