The most unusual types of passenger transport in Russia
Bus, tram, trolleybus, metro are too boring. Sometimes standard solutions do not work - we are talking about original ways of solving transport problems in the regions of Russia.
Volgograd metrotram
Volgograd, rebuilt after the war, was designed according to the best Soviet standards - industrial zones were separated from residential areas. Another characteristic feature of the city is its horizontal spatial structure. The city stretches in length for a hundred kilometers along the Volga, while it is extremely narrow in width - only a few kilometers. As a result, citizens have to travel long distances along a small number of transport corridors. Already in the 70s, the city's passenger transport system could not cope with passenger flows - buses and trams were crowded at rush hour. The standard solution to a similar problem in the Soviet Union was the construction of a metro. However, according to unspoken rules, the metro was supposed only to cities with a population of one million (and even then not to everyone and not all at once). At that time, only 800 thousand people lived in Volgograd.
An original way out of the situation was the construction of the metro tram. An underground tunnel was built in the central part of the city (all metro construction standards were applied), and on the outskirts - dedicated tram lines. The rolling stock along the entire route is ordinary trams. Due to this original solution, it was possible to significantly reduce the capital costs of construction and subsequent maintenance of the stations. The tunnel was built only in the built-up central part, where it was not possible to lay a dedicated path on the surface. At the same time, the speed of train movement was lower by only 10 km / h.
Volgograd was not the only Soviet city that solved the transport problem in such an original way. Metrotram was also built in Krivoy Rog, which had similar input data to Volgograd - stretched along and narrow across, with a population of less than a million people. As the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent de-industrialization showed, this was a wise decision. The cities that have chosen the metro (Nizhny Novgorod, Dnepropetrovsk, Samara, Yerevan) are now forced to chronically subsidize transportation (we told about this in detail). The passenger traffic of the Volgograd tram is also not large (parallel bus routes, poorly thought out location of stations, undeveloped system of free transfers between modes of transport interfere) and is roughly comparable to the weakest metrosystem in Russia - Samara. However, he avoided chronic losses - his economy is saved by the low (compared to the metro) operating costs for the overhead section of the track.
Crimean intercity trolleybus
In the mid-1950s, the road between Simferopol and the South Coast of Crimea (the main resort area) has not changed much since the days of the young Leo Tolstoy, who served in these places. Classic narrow mountain serpentine, covered with a mixture of tar and gravel, with high ascents and descents. In the days of Tolstoy, on the way to the resort, one had to make many stops - the horses quickly got tired of traveling through the mountain landscape. In Soviet times, buses that used to run here experienced a similar problem - the design features of internal combustion engines are such that they quickly lose power and speed during the ascent. Like horse-drawn carriages, buses had to make frequent stops along the way, "cool" the engine, and the travel time between Simferopol and Yalta took 4-5 hours.
Since tsarist times, there have been various options for solving the transport problem of the Crimean resort. Major options included building a railroad or running a tram - but the need to build many bridges and tunnels across the mountains made these options astronomically expensive. The problem was solved by the general secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev was a well-known fan of trolleybuses - during his reign, tram routes were massively canceled in Moscow and trolleybus routes were launched. It was decided to build a trolleybus route in Crimea as well. A large-scale reconstruction of the old serpentine was carried out, which was adapted to the needs of the trolleybus - the road was widened, and many turns were made smoother.
The trolleybus on this route quickly became indispensable and one of the symbols of Crimea (the longest trolleybus route in the world). In the early 1960s, the pantograph head was improved, which made it possible to increase the speed of the trolleybus. To date, the travel time between Simferopol and Yalta by trolleybus is 2.5 hours.
Minibuses in the cities of the North
The cities of the North are usually located at great distances from each other. In such cases, it is not profitable to build capital roads - low freight and passenger traffic will not allow to recoup the investment. The salvation and, in fact, the only alternative is small aircraft - small planes and helicopters.
A classic example of such machines is the Soviet AN-2. Known as the "maize", the aircraft can operate in absolutely extreme conditions - it is not picky about the surface of the airfield and the length of the runway. Passengers often call such planes "minibuses with wings" - because of the small number of passenger seats inside. Small aircraft usually serve remote cities and areas where low passenger traffic makes any other means of transport unprofitable.
Unfortunately, officials of the Federal Air Transport Agency, in pursuit of safety, have regulated small aircraft in the country as much as possible. The requirements for pilots and airfields of small aircraft differ little from the requirements for large airports and pilots of large long-haul aircraft. Because of this, there are relatively few such passenger flights in our country, most of them tend to large centers of mining (Yamal, Norilsk, etc.). And the provision of small towns and villages with small aircraft flights is incomparable with similar settlements in Alaska and Canada.
Hydrofoil in Nizhny Novgorod
In the Soviet years, river transport was a full-fledged type of passenger transportation. Older Russians still remember how they got from the regional center to the regional center on Meteora and Rockets - high-speed hydrofoils. However, with the development of the network of roads and railways, river passenger transport increasingly lost the competition - in terms of the speed of transportation, their cost price and the width of the transport network. After the collapse of the USSR on the Volga, with rare exceptions, only cargo flights and tourist ships remained.
Hydrofoils are still in demand for transportation on Siberian rivers - in the absence of roads and railways, they are the most efficient alternative. In 2019, it was decided to send two 45Rs produced at the Valdai Alekseev bureau in Nizhny Novgorod to the Nizhny Novgorod routes - between the regional center and the tourist suburbs - Gorodets and Makaryevo.
However, even the initiators of the revival of the river routes themselves do not hide the fact that the project is largely an image-making project and will not survive without subsidies provided by the regional government. I must say that only a few ships are involved in the transportation, so the amount of subsidies, in general, is not burdensome for the budget.
Of course, it is great to ride with the breeze along the Volga and enjoy the picturesque views, but you need to understand that this is a completely different market segment (tourist, not passenger). We wrote in detail about how cargo transportation on the river can compete with road transport (primarily economies of scale and minimal infrastructure costs), but in the passenger segment, these benefits are more difficult to exploit. If the region stops subsidizing river transport, passengers will almost immediately switch back to unsustainable and unaesthetic, but cheap buses.
Vladivostok funicular
Vladivostok is an amazingly picturesque city, spread out on high hills around the Golden Horn Bay. However, moving from one hill to another is a rather big problem - highways often force you to make a significant detour when moving around the city. This motivates citizens to buy private cars and also makes it harder for public transport to use the same roads.
In the 1950s, of course, motorization in the city had not yet reached its current scale, but public transport still worked very badly. Nikita Khrushchev became the author of the original solution to the problem, as was often the case at that time. Shortly before that, he visited the American San Francisco, which is geographically similar to the seaside capital - the same hilly coastal city. Since the 19th century, in San Francisco, cable cars have been used to move from bottom to top, while on mountain routes, cable traction has long won the competition with an electric tram. Khrushchev was inspired by the idea - according to his idea, the ability to move not only horizontally, but also vertically, will increase the convenience of movement around the city and unload public transport.
Unlike San Francisco, the city built not a cable car, but a funicular. The funicular consists of two carriages that move up and down the mountainside on a cable car. The rope is located under the rails, and the movement is provided by a motor located in a special room at the top station of the funicular. The length of the tracks is only 183 meters, which is several times shorter than the cable car route in San Francisco.
The funicular is well established in the city. For a long time, he connected the two buildings of the local university, and the main passengers were students who traveled to classes from one building to another. The funicular is the only one in Russia that operates in the mode of public transport (in Sochi, the funicular carries the passengers of the sanatorium; in Nizhny Novgorod, the opening of the restored funicular is scheduled for 2021). However, in 2013, as part of the reorganization of the university, students moved to study on Russky Island, and the funicular's passenger traffic plummeted. With a ticket price of 14 rubles, the cost of transportation for one passenger is 36 rubles. Therefore, today the main passengers of the funicular are tourists, and the funicular has become a tourist highlight of the city. At the top station of the funicular, there is the main viewpoint from which you can enjoy stunning views of the bay, the city center and the cable-stayed bridge. Beautiful views also open from the windows of the funicular itself.
Moscow monorail
The Moscow metro is built on a radial-ring system. The main problem of this scheme is the congestion of central stations and insufficient metro coverage on the outskirts (you have to move between neighboring lines through the city center). In fact, many of the current actions of the Moscow authorities - the opening of the second ring line, the launch of the MCC - are largely aimed at solving this particular problem. In the era of the previous mayor Luzhkov, they also tried to solve this problem. One of the most striking attempts is the launch of the monorail.
A monorail is a small train that moves along a specially created overpass for it. Generally speaking, this type of transport has many advantages. Compared to a tram, it does not take up space from road transport (which may be relevant in narrow streets), moves faster (including due to the absence of intersections with highways) and creates less noise. The monorail benefits from the metro in terms of construction and operation costs - the construction and maintenance of the monorail is several times cheaper than the creation of a full-fledged metro infrastructure. Monorail roads were considered in the 1960s as one of the options for the further development of the metro in Moscow. Considering all of the above, at the time of its launch in 2004, the Moscow Monorail did not look like a failed idea.
However, in practice, everything turned out to be more complicated. The main benefit of the road was the ability to link two large areas (separated by rail) and provide access to the telecentre. Otherwise, the Moscow monorail had many drawbacks. The biggest problem was that monorail was not an established technology as a mode of transport. There are various unrelated technical solutions for organizing monorail tracks; there are no factories in the world specializing in the production of rolling stock for this type of transport. As a result, the Moscow authorities had to do everything from scratch - to develop technology, rolling stock, that is, it was largely a scientific rather than an engineering project. As a result - high investment costs for launch. Some technical solutions turned out to be frankly unsuccessful. The large number of curvatures of the track did not allow the trains to develop the required speed, and the small capacity of the cars did not allow to accommodate all available passengers. In addition, the project was never extended - only 5 stations were built. This means that the monorail essentially performed the functions of intra-district transport (i.e. trams) at the price of the metro and did not use its potential for main-line urban transport in any way. As a result, in the best years of this transport, the cost of transporting one passenger was about 200 rubles, while the cost of a ticket was around 30 rubles.
Every year, the Moscow authorities allocate about 1 billion rubles to subsidize the monorail (for comparison, the entire budget of Samara is about 15 billion rubles). It is not surprising that the new Moscow authorities are trying to gradually get rid of this "business card" of the city. Now the monorail is actually switched to tourist mode - the intervals of its movement have been increased to 30 minutes, and early in the morning and in the evening the trains do not run at all. If you have never ridden the Moscow monorail before, you may not have much time to do it before it was finally closed.
Nizhny Novgorod ropeway
The business center of Nizhny Novgorod and the large industrial suburb of Bor are separated by only 4 kilometers in a straight line. However, the great Russian river Volga flows along this path. In Nizhny Novgorod, the idea of building a bridge in this place has been discussed for many years - but due to the high cost, not a single project has ever seen the green color. The only bridge across the Volga in the city is located upstream - before the confluence of the Oka into the Volga, where the river is not yet so full. Therefore, the inhabitants of Bor were forced to make a huge detour 30 kilometers long, as well as to stand in numerous traffic jams.
In 2010, the Nizhny Novgorod authorities found an original solution to a long-standing problem. A cable car was built between the two banks. The cost of construction was only 1 billion rubles (for comparison, the cost of building one Strelka metro station in the city in 2018 was 14 billion rubles with an insignificant passenger traffic). The cable car quickly became commercially viable - moreover, it even paid the interest costs on loans taken for its construction itself. The income of the Nizhny Novgorod cable car did not shake the expansion of the old bridge across the Volga, which solved the problem of perennial traffic jams. At the same time, the cost of travel by cable car is quite high, but this does not scare off passengers.
And the Nizhny Novgorod cable car quickly became a local tourist attraction. From her cabins you can admire the picturesque views of the Volga, which in these places becomes a truly full-flowing river. The views that open from here cannot be compared with the views from the booth of the Moscow cable car in Luzhniki (besides, the ticket in Moscow is more expensive). It is not surprising that many tourists who come to the city consider it their duty to ride the cable car - the only one in Russia that operates in the mode of public transport.
In general, the Nizhny Novgorod cable car is a rare example in our selection, when a transport curiosity turned out to be completely appropriate. For a small budget, the local authorities managed to elegantly solve the transport problem and avoid the construction of multi-billion dollar bridges and road crossings.
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