School pass on a toll road – Newspaper Kommersant No. 196 (7397) dated 10/21/2022

Deputies from United Russia submitted to the State Duma a bill on free travel on toll roads for school buses and vehicles transporting children to camps and on excursions. The Ministry of Economy of the Russian Federation plans to introduce a similar benefit for electric vehicles from 2023. Kommersant’s experts and sources are perplexed: it is not yet clear how the shortfall in expenses will be reimbursed to concessionaires – road operators, agreements with which were concluded before the new legislation came into force.

A group of parliamentarians from United Russia (Andrey Turchak, Andrey Kutepov, Andrey Isaev, etc.) submitted to the State Duma amendments to the law “On highways and road activities”, exempting school buses and transport from toll roads, participating in the “organized transportation of groups of children” (on an excursion, to a camp, etc.). The amendments, the explanatory note says, will reduce “the financial burden on organizations that transport children for educational and other developmental purposes, the vast majority of which are funded from the federal, regional and local budgets.”

Public transport, vehicles of operational services with special signals (fire brigade, ambulance), mail have the right to free travel. In 2020, the Legislative Assembly of the Krasnodar Territory proposed expanding the list by adding cars of disabled people, veterans, heroes of the USSR, and residents of settlements adjacent to the toll road. However, the initiative was rejected. In 2021, the White House planned free passage for electric vehicles on one of the highways as an experiment to be carried out by the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Finance. As a result, the department was obliged to send a report to the government in January 2022. It is not clear whether the experiment was carried out, but in September the Ministry of Economy announced the preparation of documents for the free passage of electric vehicles from 2023 for a period of three years. Kommersant’s department reported yesterday that the proposal was being worked out.

The Avtodor state company, the Ministry of Transport, as well as representatives of toll road operators do not comment on the situation.

To implement the initiatives, sources explain to Kommersant, it is necessary first of all to develop an identification system for buses and electric vehicles that have benefits. There should be no problems at toll plazas with barriers, but on roads with a barrier-free system (TsKAD, M-12), the bill is issued automatically according to the car number. The traffic police maintains a register of school buses, but there is no register of vehicles transporting children to camps and on excursions. “In the context of large-scale digitalization, it seems possible to regulate the procedure for identifying buses within the framework of by-laws, as well as the provisions of concession agreements and PPP agreements,” the authors of the amendments believe. As for electric vehicles, according to Kommersant, the traffic police compiled a list of state numbers for vehicles for the Ministry of Economy, but it needs not only to be transferred to the use of Avtodor and road operators, but also regularly updated. The Ministry of Economy previously proposed to introduce an appropriate service at the State Services for owners of electric cars.

Kommersant’s interlocutors also point to the revenues of road owners and concessionaires (North-Western Concession Company, New Quality of Roads LLC, Lytkarinskaya Toll Road LLC and others) that are falling as a result of the emergence of new preferential categories of transport. “If the concessionaire does not achieve a return on investment or does not receive income determined by the agreement as a result of the application of the benefits provided for by the bill, the concessor has the right to use methods that do not provide for direct budgetary expenses for the purpose of compensation,” the explanatory note to the draft law on school buses says. In other words, Avtodor or regional governments should look for a source of compensation, according to United Russia. At the beginning of the year, according to Kommersant’s information, the Ministry of Economy believed that with the maximum traffic on the M-11 of 1.4 thousand electric vehicles per month, the total amount of shortfall in income would be 4.2 million rubles. At the same time, the department, with the support of the Ministry of Finance, proposed to compensate for them by increasing tariffs on toll roads, but no decision was made. On October 14, according to Kommersant’s information, a meeting was held in the government, as a result of which it was decided that the Ministry of Economy, together with the Ministry of Transport, the Avtodor State Corporation, would “additionally work out” sources of “financial support for compensation” of shortfalls in income until October 27.

According to the traffic police, there are more than 120,000 school buses in the Russian Federation. Estimates of the fleet of electric vehicles by departments are different: 14.6 thousand – according to the traffic police (as of January 1), 18.7 thousand – according to Avtostat (as of July 1), 26.3 thousand – by the Ministry of Economy. The latter predicts the growth of the fleet to 136.8 thousand electric vehicles in 2025. As early as next year, the Moskvich plant will produce 50,000 electric vehicles a year, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said yesterday. The estimated capacity of the Evolute plant in the Lipetsk region is 100,000 electric cars per year.

“Any change in legislation under a concession agreement, as a rule, is a circumstance that allows the concessionaire to initiate a review of its terms or start discussions about compensation for possible additional costs,” Denis Kachkin, partner at the Kachkin and Partners law firm, explained to Kommersant. “Concession is a flexible investment a mechanism that implies guarantees for the return of the concessionaire’s investments”. The same follows from the law on concessions: if the adoption of a new law leads to “a deterioration in the position of the concessionaire in such a way that he is deprived of what he was entitled to expect when concluding a concession agreement, it must be changed in such a way as to ensure the recoupment of the concessionaire’s investments and receive them the required gross proceeds.

Ivan Buranov