After the fare increase, a shuttle bus to Minsk airport costs twice as little as a regular bus. How did this happen?
Today in Minsk, fares increased again for public transport, and Blizko.by writes about the curious situation caused by the contradiction between different rules introduced by officials.
Illustrative photo
New price lists have already been displayed at ticket counters, and the tariff file has been updated on the Minsktrans website.
Among other things, suburban bus fares have increased:
- for regular routes, 0.14 Belarusian rubles;
- for express regular routes, 0.16 Belarusian rubles;
- for express routes, 0.17 Belarusian rubles.
Also, maximum tariffs were set for shuttle buses (officially referred to as "urban passenger and hand luggage transportation by M2 category buses on express regular routes"):
- at 3.30 Belarusian rubles for one trip including value-added tax;
- at 5.00 Belarusian rubles for one trip including value-added tax when transporting passengers to satellite towns of Minsk.
And it is because of these maximum tariffs for shuttle buses that a strange incident occurred.
Bus No. 300 (large MAZ-203 or MAZ-251 buses operate here), as well as shuttle bus No. 1400, run from Minsk to Minsk National Airport. Until now, the fare for them was approximately the same (the shuttle bus was slightly more expensive).
The fare for Minsktrans bus No. 300 remained tied to the mileage for suburban routes: for 45 kilometers, one has to pay 7.6 rubles (17 kopecks per 1 km).
However, the ticket price for the shuttle bus is now limited by the maximum city tariff. Therefore, a trip on shuttle bus No. 1400 of the carrier "Betty Travel" costs 3.3 rubles.
This means that getting to the airport by shuttle bus is 2.3 times cheaper than by regular bus.
Now it will be interesting to find out how much the new shuttle bus fare covers the cost of travel and whether many passengers will choose the regular bus, where one has to pay twice as much.