The All-Russian Association of Passengers asked to postpone the law on taxis due to fears of a shortage of carriers

The All-Russian Association of Passengers is asking the authorities to postpone the entry into force of part of the amendments to the law regulating the operation of taxis for a year, until September 1, 2024. The association believes that the regions do not have the infrastructure necessary for the implementation of the law and the money to create it. The entry into force of the law may lead to a shortage of carriers, follows from a letter from the organization to the first deputy chairman of the Federation Council, Secretary of the General Council of United Russia Andrei Turchak, said RBC chairman of the association, member of the Public Chamber Ilya Zotov.

The letter refers to the law was accepted in December 2022. In particular, he obliges the regions to create three registers – taxi ordering services, carriers and passenger taxis. The federal state information system for passenger taxis, the operator of which will be the Ministry of Transport, will have to collect and process the data of the registers.

In addition, according to the adopted law, taxi ordering services will be required to provide the FSB with access to databases that are used to store, process and transfer orders.

The letter from the association of passengers emphasizes that the regions cannot yet create registers due to the lack of a technical base and lack of funds in local budgets. From September 1, 2023, passengers will not be able to order taxis that are not included in the registers, Mr. Zotov clarifies in a letter. In his opinion, this may lead to a shortage of carriers in the regions.

According to Mr. Zotov, last year Moscow launched the register of CIS “ART”, which is necessary for the implementation of the law. Other regions will not be able to launch such a system until September 1 “due to the unavailability of technical documentation and the lack of its coordination with departments,” the association’s letter says.

Mr. Zotov also draws attention to the fact that the state information system for passenger taxis is still not working, and its use in the regions is technically impossible. The capabilities of the system are designed to process 50 thousand records of carriers per year, while in 2021 in the Russian Federation there were more than 400 thousand issued permits for transportation in a taxi, the head of the association notes with reference to the data of the contract for the creation of the system.

In addition, the association asks to postpone the adoption of the following amendments to January 1, 2027:

• the owner of a passenger taxi is obliged to undergo maintenance within the time limits stipulated by the manufacturer;
• the color design of the taxi must comply with the requirements of the region;
• drivers who have not passed certification for knowledge of the area, and those who have more than three unpaid fines for traffic violations cannot be allowed to work;
• the owner of passenger taxis is obliged to register in the Russian Federation and open a branch in the region if the number of cars in it exceeds 4 thousand.

The Taxi Act was signed Russian President Vladimir Putin on December 29, 2022. In March this year, the FSB developed a draft decree of the Russian government, which will allow the special service to extrajudicially gain access to information systems and databases of taxi aggregators.

Erdni Kagaltynov