Fixed-route taxies’ wars in Chelyabinsk -back to turbulent 90-s!!!
Since 2011 we can observe fixed-route taxis repartition in Chelyabinsk in its frenetic pace. In 2013 the situation got much worse. This happened because of a competition between passenger transport operators to have a right to make a contract to run this kind of a service. The official version of making this competition says that this competition will help to reduce the number of fixed-route taxi accidents and draw bona-fide passenger transport operators. It will also help to put things to right on the market of passenger transportation. However it is not a secret that actions of city authorities of Chelyabinsk not only contradicted with Russian constitution and other laws of Russian Federation and official version of making this competition announced to people in media was just a cover and all these back-door games were planned as a repartition of fixed-route taxis market in favor of” friend firms” which have never worked for citizens benefit and will never do.
Devil is not as black as it is painted, or is?
The next route conflict was discussed on a recent emergency meeting in Chelyabinsk . Participants of this conflict mutually announced their pretentions and actually the conflict was ended with this. Nobody could expect another way! Chelyabinsk administration, trying to imitate heavy and socially orientated activity, has opened” Pandora’s box” and rashly let loose to those who know ways how to come to an agreement with the authority and that is why obviously always win in competitions. Now, after all these conflicts, it would be best to make an error correction work ,but just now in all media we hear really truthful information from administrative officials that they have never had any authority! Chelyabinsk administration with Transport Supervision ,and also some representatives of the local authority, acknowledged its illegal activity but their winners do not already hear these words, they have insignificant document from administration, saying that they are the best of all in one hand ,and a knife to threaten those and destroy the property of those, whom they consider to be beaten. They feel euphoria from the fact that they can do all of this with impunity. Skirmishes between fixed-route taxi drivers working for different operators in Chelyabinsk are taking place extremely often. And all this has a reason, and this reason is unhealthy business competing. Very often in media we can hear about the facts of forceful repartition of a transport market where intimidation, threats and beatings of competitors are used. We are not in turbulent 90-s, are we?
The direction of the transport company “Rusin” which has been operating many fixed- taxi routes in Chelyabinsk for about 10 years, repeatedly addressed local law-enforcement authorities according to the fact of a damage of company’s vehicles. In May 17,2013 three buses were damaged by their competitors. In spite of Police actions, five buses were damaged by plotters next day. During June, some new facts of damage of buses were found. On terminus of routes, the drivers, working for the company “Rusin”, were exposed to psychological aggression coming from the competing company “Consul”, headed by Verbovsky S.V. People, who were representatives of his company, threated drivers working for “Rusin”, trying to make them work for “Consul”.
Hundreds of taxi drivers, besides “Rusin” ,have addressed police because of damage of their buses. The most cruel fight, of course, is taking place for the most profitable routes, which are in Chelyabinsk city center. “Winners “use different dirty, illegal techniques, such as; tire cutting, beating drivers, arson of buses and many other ways in the style of aggressive competition.
City officials, imitating care about citizens, are standing behind all these dirty deals. But they are merely making repartition of fixed-route taxi market in favor of themselves (careless and unprincipled transport operators). Transport operators who do not care about their work at all, who do not keep license requirements and conditions pertaining to safety of passenger transportation. How it could happen that the routes ,which had been served by the company with an active license for years ,were put up for a tender? Was the license terminated ,or the transport operator refused to serve its routes? No, never! The thing is ,that the company remains an independent transport operator and is not approached to any power structures or local public authorities. The company directorate does not look for a meeting with city officials or a help of the high and mighty people to whom officials are afraid to refuse in requests.
Competition is a fake…
On the first hand, according to part 1 of article 8 of the Constitution of Russian Federation ,we know that economic freedom for enterprising must be guaranteed. But the local officials do not care about federal legislation and they easily can change any law for their own benefit. And, by the way, very often local courts help them closing their eyes on apparent breach of laws and inconsistence with legislation.
Frankly speaking, the Articles of Highway Transportation in Russian Federation and also Rules of Passenger Transportation by motor vehicles and federal normative legal base do not allow organize any tenders or competitions in dividing routes between operators!!! Given contradiction, triggers a practice of making polar opposite decisions by courts, in the matter of validity to organize any tenders or competitions in dividing of fixed-taxi routes!
On the second hand, all tenders and competitions ,which are held by local public authorities, come under the notion of public. According to the Civil Code of Russian Federation (article 1057-1061), public competition presupposes getting payments or awards or transfers in the ownership a proprietary interest. But, wait a bit! If in such sort of “competitions” the capital prize is not a thing, or financial gain, but just a right to serve a fixed-taxi route, this can not pretend to be something material.
If in such sort of “competitions” the top prize is not a material thing or financial reward, but just a right to serve a route or a route itself, which is given to a company not for good but for temporary occupation, in this way, such sort of actions can’t be called a competition! What is meant here is granting of the right to serve a route, without any financial amends. In fact, this competition does not have an order placement in its pure form ,but just admits an operator to serve a route. Such sort of payment, as it has already been said before, can’t be determined as material ,and this fact does not correspond with article 1057 of The Civil Code of Russian Federation.
It is hard to escape a conclusion ,that we are dealing with a competition in which material gain or financial payments are not presented at all. According to this fact we can say about significant gaps in legislative control of such kind of competitions. In fact, such sort of competitions are illegal at root.
Another fact is also revolting. The thing is, that with the help of this, so called ,competitions, authorities use and control spheres that have never belonged to them. To this strange check-list we can subsume a project of a route, a bus route time table, etc. According to the article 214 and 215 of CC of RF, Administration of Chelyabinsk has no right of ownership on the territory of the city. According to the article 216, chapter 19 of CC of RF, they also have no rights of possession of any commercial routes of any operators within the city. That is to say, officials of the city administration, violate federal laws and show all, that officials can do with laws anything they want. They are ready to breach them and do not care about safety of city dwellers. They are not able to organize normal work of municipal transportation providers ,which nearly died, but with a maniac desire ,they are trying to control and regulate private sector, which worked quite well before their interference. And after that, some criminal -oriented companies appeared on the fixed-route taxi market, companies that are interested only in profit, companies that do not need medical inspection of drivers or technical state control of their transport. And even route-tickets are given in advance for many days, with appendix for drivers how to fill them. These people have never heard about liability insurance, so in case of a road traffic accident their passengers will never be able to prove anything in court, because a bus will happen to be shill, its driver intimidated and all this shit will be covered by official insiders from a city administration or mighty people from enforcement authorities. By the way, I have found an article from 2010 in Internet about fixed-route taxis in Chelyabinsk! I’m quoting here: “Every time, when the next new foreign-made bus was burnt down or was crashed or triggered off, an old, hazardous, jalopy bus took its place on a route. The main peculiarity of this story is in following, -As soon as licensed operator’s minibuses were taken away, their place were occupied by minibuses of companies connected with enforcement authorities.
In case if somebody from former route owners tried to boot bullies out from their route, police officers immediately appeared. For example, Sergei Vladimirovich Verbovsky, who used to work for criminal investigation department.” (http://dgudkov.livejournal.com/167648.html). It does not look like coincidence! Just the same scenario is taking place now in Chelyabinsk. It goes without saying that officials and their friend companies will always feel themselves good, but how about passengers?
“Who is in fault?” in this situation - we found! But,-”what to do? “- It remains to be seen!
At the end of this article I would love to remember the words of William Gladstone, who once said -
“It is a duty for government to make it difficult for people to do wrong and easy to do right”.
I think that in our country everything is done in the opposite way…
Devil is not as black as it is painted, or is?
The next route conflict was discussed on a recent emergency meeting in Chelyabinsk . Participants of this conflict mutually announced their pretentions and actually the conflict was ended with this. Nobody could expect another way! Chelyabinsk administration, trying to imitate heavy and socially orientated activity, has opened” Pandora’s box” and rashly let loose to those who know ways how to come to an agreement with the authority and that is why obviously always win in competitions. Now, after all these conflicts, it would be best to make an error correction work ,but just now in all media we hear really truthful information from administrative officials that they have never had any authority! Chelyabinsk administration with Transport Supervision ,and also some representatives of the local authority, acknowledged its illegal activity but their winners do not already hear these words, they have insignificant document from administration, saying that they are the best of all in one hand ,and a knife to threaten those and destroy the property of those, whom they consider to be beaten. They feel euphoria from the fact that they can do all of this with impunity. Skirmishes between fixed-route taxi drivers working for different operators in Chelyabinsk are taking place extremely often. And all this has a reason, and this reason is unhealthy business competing. Very often in media we can hear about the facts of forceful repartition of a transport market where intimidation, threats and beatings of competitors are used. We are not in turbulent 90-s, are we?
The direction of the transport company “Rusin” which has been operating many fixed- taxi routes in Chelyabinsk for about 10 years, repeatedly addressed local law-enforcement authorities according to the fact of a damage of company’s vehicles. In May 17,2013 three buses were damaged by their competitors. In spite of Police actions, five buses were damaged by plotters next day. During June, some new facts of damage of buses were found. On terminus of routes, the drivers, working for the company “Rusin”, were exposed to psychological aggression coming from the competing company “Consul”, headed by Verbovsky S.V. People, who were representatives of his company, threated drivers working for “Rusin”, trying to make them work for “Consul”.
Hundreds of taxi drivers, besides “Rusin” ,have addressed police because of damage of their buses. The most cruel fight, of course, is taking place for the most profitable routes, which are in Chelyabinsk city center. “Winners “use different dirty, illegal techniques, such as; tire cutting, beating drivers, arson of buses and many other ways in the style of aggressive competition.
City officials, imitating care about citizens, are standing behind all these dirty deals. But they are merely making repartition of fixed-route taxi market in favor of themselves (careless and unprincipled transport operators). Transport operators who do not care about their work at all, who do not keep license requirements and conditions pertaining to safety of passenger transportation. How it could happen that the routes ,which had been served by the company with an active license for years ,were put up for a tender? Was the license terminated ,or the transport operator refused to serve its routes? No, never! The thing is ,that the company remains an independent transport operator and is not approached to any power structures or local public authorities. The company directorate does not look for a meeting with city officials or a help of the high and mighty people to whom officials are afraid to refuse in requests.
Competition is a fake…
On the first hand, according to part 1 of article 8 of the Constitution of Russian Federation ,we know that economic freedom for enterprising must be guaranteed. But the local officials do not care about federal legislation and they easily can change any law for their own benefit. And, by the way, very often local courts help them closing their eyes on apparent breach of laws and inconsistence with legislation.
Frankly speaking, the Articles of Highway Transportation in Russian Federation and also Rules of Passenger Transportation by motor vehicles and federal normative legal base do not allow organize any tenders or competitions in dividing routes between operators!!! Given contradiction, triggers a practice of making polar opposite decisions by courts, in the matter of validity to organize any tenders or competitions in dividing of fixed-taxi routes!
On the second hand, all tenders and competitions ,which are held by local public authorities, come under the notion of public. According to the Civil Code of Russian Federation (article 1057-1061), public competition presupposes getting payments or awards or transfers in the ownership a proprietary interest. But, wait a bit! If in such sort of “competitions” the capital prize is not a thing, or financial gain, but just a right to serve a fixed-taxi route, this can not pretend to be something material.
If in such sort of “competitions” the top prize is not a material thing or financial reward, but just a right to serve a route or a route itself, which is given to a company not for good but for temporary occupation, in this way, such sort of actions can’t be called a competition! What is meant here is granting of the right to serve a route, without any financial amends. In fact, this competition does not have an order placement in its pure form ,but just admits an operator to serve a route. Such sort of payment, as it has already been said before, can’t be determined as material ,and this fact does not correspond with article 1057 of The Civil Code of Russian Federation.
It is hard to escape a conclusion ,that we are dealing with a competition in which material gain or financial payments are not presented at all. According to this fact we can say about significant gaps in legislative control of such kind of competitions. In fact, such sort of competitions are illegal at root.
Another fact is also revolting. The thing is, that with the help of this, so called ,competitions, authorities use and control spheres that have never belonged to them. To this strange check-list we can subsume a project of a route, a bus route time table, etc. According to the article 214 and 215 of CC of RF, Administration of Chelyabinsk has no right of ownership on the territory of the city. According to the article 216, chapter 19 of CC of RF, they also have no rights of possession of any commercial routes of any operators within the city. That is to say, officials of the city administration, violate federal laws and show all, that officials can do with laws anything they want. They are ready to breach them and do not care about safety of city dwellers. They are not able to organize normal work of municipal transportation providers ,which nearly died, but with a maniac desire ,they are trying to control and regulate private sector, which worked quite well before their interference. And after that, some criminal -oriented companies appeared on the fixed-route taxi market, companies that are interested only in profit, companies that do not need medical inspection of drivers or technical state control of their transport. And even route-tickets are given in advance for many days, with appendix for drivers how to fill them. These people have never heard about liability insurance, so in case of a road traffic accident their passengers will never be able to prove anything in court, because a bus will happen to be shill, its driver intimidated and all this shit will be covered by official insiders from a city administration or mighty people from enforcement authorities. By the way, I have found an article from 2010 in Internet about fixed-route taxis in Chelyabinsk! I’m quoting here: “Every time, when the next new foreign-made bus was burnt down or was crashed or triggered off, an old, hazardous, jalopy bus took its place on a route. The main peculiarity of this story is in following, -As soon as licensed operator’s minibuses were taken away, their place were occupied by minibuses of companies connected with enforcement authorities.
In case if somebody from former route owners tried to boot bullies out from their route, police officers immediately appeared. For example, Sergei Vladimirovich Verbovsky, who used to work for criminal investigation department.” (http://dgudkov.livejournal.com/167648.html). It does not look like coincidence! Just the same scenario is taking place now in Chelyabinsk. It goes without saying that officials and their friend companies will always feel themselves good, but how about passengers?
“Who is in fault?” in this situation - we found! But,-”what to do? “- It remains to be seen!
At the end of this article I would love to remember the words of William Gladstone, who once said -
“It is a duty for government to make it difficult for people to do wrong and easy to do right”.
I think that in our country everything is done in the opposite way…