– Driving this trolleybus is easier than the old ones. But you need a habit – the dimensions are different, it is wider and longer by almost a meter! explains Tatyana. By the way, the terminus of this route will soon be moved – due to the fact that Belarusian cars can travel up to 20 kilometers without a contact network, on an autonomous route. In fact, because of this feature of the model, it was decided to buy them for the first large-scale renewal of electric transport in a city of more than one million in 15 years.
How long have they waited! Yekaterinburg’s plan to purchase 50 new trolleybuses was announced just over a year ago. The “youngest” trolleybuses plying the streets of the city came out in 2012, and the oldest are more than a quarter of a century old. Passengers pushed broken cars by hand, and the appearance of beaten “deer” did not decorate the streets.
Belarusian cars can drive up to 20 kilometers without a contact network, on an autonomous route. That’s why they bought them.
More than one and a half billion rubles were spent on a transport gift for the 300th anniversary of Yekaterinburg, one billion from the federal budget, the rest from the regional and municipal budget. We know that two suppliers participated in the call for tenders. Belarusian manufacturers can participate in tenders for the supply of goods to Russian state-owned enterprises on the same terms as local factories, and this time Belkommunmash from Belarus won.
In anticipation of the promised gift, the Urals looked at the photos and decided on the color of the trolleybuses – the majority voted for blue. I was nervous about a slight delay in delivery of the first batch, due to sanctions. And when a dozen cars were parked in the main square, then sent on the roads, all social networks were flooded with their photos. On the very first day, an incident occurred – a trolleybus, standing at a standstill, sniffed a passing truck. The Urals worried about his car!
By the way, the first trolleybuses passed through Yekaterinburg, then Sverdlovsk, on October 17, 1943, at the height of the Great Patriotic War. The new public transport was necessary for the city, which grew significantly due to companies evacuated from different regions and republics of the Soviet Union. Thus, the local trolleybus traffic also has an anniversary this year!
In general, there are dozens of Russian cities with trolleybus traffic, but their list is constantly shrinking. In 2009, the last time trolleybuses traveled Tyumen routes, in 2015 – in Kurgan and Kamensk-Uralsky, since 2017 the arrows have been lowered in Lipetsk and Astrakhan, and since 2019 – in Perm. Tver has been without trolleybuses since 2020. In Moscow, which until 2015 had the largest trolleybus system in the world, only one museum route remained, and even this was temporarily suspended. The city authorities considered this type of transport obsolete.
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p class=””>But Yekaterinburg, with fifty new cars, had the opportunity to stay in the “trolley club”. With the “horned buses”, democratic and environmentally friendly transport also becomes comfortable.
Trolleybus driver Tatyana Polishchuk admits that she loves everything about the Belarusian “horned bus”. Photo: Tatiana Andreeva
In the meantime
An electric bus made in Vladimir was presented at the St. Petersburg transport festival SpbTransportFest. Part of the components of the plant “Volgabas Group” receives from Belarus: heating and windscreen wiper systems (“Belrobot”), multiplex systems, as well as an instrument panel in the driver’s cabin (company “NVK”) .
– We hope to enter the St. Petersburg market, as well as the local regional market – in Vladimir it is planned to replace the entire trolleybus fleet, – told SOYUZ correspondent Nikolai Likhachev, technical specialist of the company.
The festival brings together the most brilliant events in the transport industry: an exhibition of innovative transport, a parade and an exhibition of rarities…
Prepared by Maria Golubkova, [email protected]
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