From September 1, taxis will become smaller, but trips will become more expensive

Yelena Petrova

From September 1, all taxi drivers must obtain a work permit. Taxi ordering services will monitor this. If they give the order to the driver without permission, they will pay a fine of up to half a million rubles. To the deputy's ear, the new law sounds like a song. There is everything there: care for the population, and the state interest, and those responsible have been appointed, and the punishment is such that everyone will be afraid. And this taxi paradise should come not sometime, but in two months.

Reality is far from the paradisiacal grounds of the Okhotny Ryad.

How many drivers in the country have a license

According to the ANO «Public Council for Taxi Development», 2 million people are engaged in hauling in the country, and 400 thousand people have a permit — four out of five work without a license. But this is the average temperature in the hospital. The situation in real taxi companies across the country is even worse. Maxim Shusharin, CEO of Yekaterinburg taxi Maxim, says that the non-Moscow reality looks even harsher:

«So that you understand: we have only 55 people for 50 thousand drivers who have a permit to transport taxi passengers. Everyone else will have to issue it, serious penalties are provided for violations. I think that no region can cope with this task».

The main condition for obtaining a permit is that each driver must issue a CTP for passenger transportation. «NI» wrote that taxi drivers complained about the greed of insurance companies everywhere, they reached The President, but their voice was not heard. The representative of the ANO «Public Taxi Council» Ekaterina Kiseleva knows why many taxi drivers will not receive a permit until September 1 or later:

— The main reason why they work illegally is the inability to get CTP insurance. It is expensive and ranges from 40 to 70 thousand in the regions, and in the capitals it reaches 160 thousand. Everywhere they face refusals of insurance companies to issue a policy. If there is no CTP policy for a taxi, this is already a gray scheme of work.

On the one hand, the legislator allowed the self-employed to work as taxi drivers without the formation of an individual entrepreneur. But this is the only positive news. Everything else makes people think: do they need it? After receiving the information from Yandex. Taxi Genrietta Aleksandrovna writes so in one of the public:

«CTP for one car will be 70-90tr (calculate yourself) license, stickers checkers, permanent passage of the, waybills… The first to be hit will be those who rent a car without yellow license plates and licenses, as well as those who are now pulling the buyback strap. The self-employed and sole proprietors will change their activities themselves. Taxi companies will begin to close. The result: Soviet times, taxis for the elite and a bunch of bombs on the sidewalks and stops. The price will be a horse. I don't see any other legal outcome yet».

Taxi license for yourself and for that guy

The state does not want to run after every taxi driver without a license, it is much easier to make them responsible for all ordering services. Now it is the aggregators who will pay huge fines for each driver without permission, to whom they will give the order. Half a million rubles is not a trifle for any enterprise, even for a large one, not to mention small aggregators in the Russian outback. And how will the ordering services check the licenses? According to the deputies, everything should be automated, says Ekaterina Kiseleva:

— Now the FGIS Taxi should start working. By law, the subjects of the federation have a choice: either use the federal system, or their own, and transfer data to the federal one. Most of the regions, with the exception of federal centers and large cities of the regions, are not ready to implement this system. There are doubts that it will work. If the aggregators are ready to accept, then the regions are not ready to provide data on the availability of permission.

The law in Russia, as always, is strict, we'd better keep quiet about justice. It says that the transfer of an order to an unlicensed driver is equivalent to the dissemination of prohibited information. Maxim Shusharin can't contain his indignation:

«That is, the legislator equated information about such an order to child pornography, to information about the method of suicide or the method of making explosives. It doesn't fit in my head how you can equate the order information to the above. It's like capital punishment, like execution, because blocking is all, the digital platform just disappears».

The system does not work and will not work for a long time, and you have to pay fines from September 1? It's hard to imagine a better way to replenish the treasury. The only trouble is that the Bolivar will not withstand the load.

— If there is no transfer of the norms of the law and it will be necessary to transfer, we will get a situation where the aggregator will not be able to transfer orders at all and be able to check permissions. There may be difficulties with the transfer of orders. There will not be enough drivers on the line, and dynamic fare formation will increase the cost of the trip, — says Ekaterina Kiseleva.

How much will a taxi cost

The cost of taxi rides has already increased in price — new cars are expensive, there are no spare parts, gasoline is getting more expensive. Only in 2023, the price in the country rose from 10% to 30%. The growth over short distances is especially noticeable.

Irina, a resident of new Moscow, told:

— Before the events in I went to Ukraine to visit my son's family for 150 rubles. It's about 2-3 km from my house. Last week I took a taxi and was amazed: the same trip already costs 650 rubles. And why would I need such a taxi?

No one — neither taxi ordering services, nor the drivers themselves, nor aggregators — want to comment on the price increase. Everyone nods to the algorithm and dynamic price formation. But it is still possible to calculate. When drivers are reduced by a third, the cost of the trip doubles. If all 75% of drivers do not get on the line on September 1, then the price of a taxi will increase 5 times.

In Yekaterinburg, 200 thousand people use taxis. Where will they all come on September 2? There is no answer.

This is not the end

If someone decided that the new rules require only one license, he does not know the Russian legislators and the authorities well. Now all drivers will have to fill out waybills. Which will be checked and for which they will also be fined. The medical examination at the beginning of the shift and at the end of it is attached to the waybills. This Soviet anachronism on a paid basis is a particularly successful find of the Duma. Taxi drivers say: there is no medical examination in any country in the world, not once a week, not once a month, let alone twice a day. In Moscow, sole proprietors offer to buy travel tickets for 6 thousand for 3 months. There are no offers for the self-employed yet, but they will definitely appear. However, Moscow is not yet Russia, says Ekaterina Kiselyova:

— A taxi driver is an employee who can go to work at any time of the day. He should be able to undergo a medical examination at any time of the day. But there are no round-the-clock medical check-ups in provincial cities. On the one hand, the law opens up the possibility of legally working for the self-employed, but at the same time limits their possibilities that they simply cannot pass a medical examination.

And the cherry on the cake is a certificate of no criminal record. It turns out it is 30 days or more. There is no single form for confirmation. Taxi companies require that it be reported that if there was a criminal record, it is extinguished. And the law says nothing about it. A month later, the driver will receive a document that will not help him in any way.

The prospect of living «as in The Soviet Union» is getting closer. If the new rules come into force, then you really won't go to the bakery by taxi.