Green action against the price rise of public transport in Zagreb

Green action is against the price rise of public transport in Zagreb. They issued a statement regarding their opinion which we quote here:

“We are against the announced drastic increase in price of the tickets for public transport. ZET asked for almost 50 percent higher price so we want the Mayor, Zagreb Holding and the City Council to prevent this. Such a big price rise would make people to use public transport less and to use private cars more and that would lead to more environmental problems in Zagreb. Less people would use public transport so the earnings of ZET wouldn’t enlarge. The public transport in Zagreb is even now more expensive than in other cities like for example Budapest, Rome and Prague so the further price rice shouldn’t happen.

For the purpose of the sustainable transport system it is totally unacceptable that the price of public transport in one direction would be even 20 percent bigger than the price of one hour of parking in the city centre. This is exactly what Zagreb Holding proposed. If it is cheaper to use cars than public transport, the majority of citizens will take their cars. After many years of leading the wrong traffic politics which was done by the city administration with the Mayor Bandic, this measure by Zagreb Holding is one more step back. It is unacceptable that Zagreb Holding and ZET want to charge the costs of their financial difficulties from the citizens of Zagreb and from the other users of Zagreb city transport. And they want to do it after years of irresponsible and luxurious behavior which resulted in annual losses of ZET of almost 300 mil HRK.

The cause of the problem is simple: the city of Zagreb and Zagreb Holding have been working as two connected tanks. The city mega-company has been used for realization of mega-projects which helped Bandic to collect the political points and all that was supported by the City Assembly. One of examples of such projects was purchasing of more than 300 new trams and buses during only 5 years’ period which are several billions HRK worth. It is obvious that the vehicles should have been renovated and it is good that things went in that direction to improve the comfort of the city transport. However, this should have been done with sustainable financial planning and through the longer period of time to avoid such a great financial loss. Now when the debts should be paid off, the Mayor unsuccessfully tries to act as the defender of socially disadvantaged groups of people and claims that he is against the price rise of public transport. On the other hand, Zagreb Holding expects citizens to be “responsible” and to take over the consequences of the irresponsible running of business which has been done by them and by the city administration.

With this new increase of prices for tickets of ZET, the public transport won’t become faster, more regular or more on time. So the citizens don’t get anything for 50 percent more money they have to pay. They only pay the consequences of bad decisions made by others.

There are certainly other departments within Holding and ZET themselves where they can rationalize the costs and increase the profit. For example, with this price rise they could get only 4 mil HRK from the 40,000 students who have the right to use cheaper monthly tickets. We have been listening stories about the large number of workers in Holding and about the workers who don’t work at all and get their salaries. These stories were told even by representatives of some unions of Holding. If we look at the average earnings and all taxes, the money could be saved by firing those who got their jobs because of political reasons. If only 40 such people were fired, 4 mil HRK could be saved monthly and that would eliminate the need for more expensive students’ tickets. Besides, 4 mil HRK is the third of the amount that the city of Zagreb paid for the gates in Varsavska street needed for the garage of shopping mall “Cvjetni” owned by Tomislav Horvatincic. Paradoxically, this garage made the traffic of trams in Ilica slower because of the number of cars.

The losses of Holding could be reduced by different organization of business. For example, there are many contracts with private firms while the job could be done by Holding itself. One of the ways to increase the earnings of ZET is to introduce cheaper tickets for shorter rides. This measure would directly motivate the citizens to leave their car at home and to use ZET services. In the present situation, many citizens use their cars for the rides of only 2 km because it is cheaper than the tickets for public transport. The ticket price is 16 HRK for both directions and if the price gets higher, for example, if it is 20 HRK this becomes even worse. By introducing cheaper tickets for shorter rides, ZET would get new customers and they could reduce the losses. The introducing of the system doesn’t need any new technology, but they could only print the tickets with the limited time, for example, 20 minutes.

All such methods, stricter controls in trams and buses, heavier fines for offenders, elimination of payment by SMS and rationalization of expenses could cover the losses. By doing this, the causes for the price rise of public transport would be eliminated.”

Bernard Ivcic, the head of transport program of Green action