The Ministry of Transport will launch a taxi information system to “squeeze out” illegal immigrants

The Federal State Information System (FSIS) Passenger Taxi, which should start operating in Russia from September 1, cost 120 million rubles, and the Situation Information Center (SIC) of the Ministry of Transport will become its operator. This was told to journalists at a briefing by Deputy Minister of Transport Dmitry Bakanov.

He noted that most of the regions today do not have the funds to create their own regional taxi registries, so they “will be able to maintain the federal register directly.” “We are in contact with all 89 subjects of the Russian Federation, including new regions (DNR, LNR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. – Vedomosti),” the official stressed. He noted that in the new regions there is a “large percentage of taxis” with Ukrainian numbers, for which the JIC has developed a technical solution that allows them to be read.

Some regions (for example, Moscow and St. Petersburg, Moscow and Leningrad regions), according to Bakanov, already have their own taxi registries. Regional authorities will have to transfer data from them to the FSIS.

Dmitry Gorshkov, General Director of the JIC, added that the Passenger Taxi information system was developed partly by the resources of the center itself, and partly by an IT company involved in a tender (he did not disclose the name). The development, according to Gorshkov, took about 10 months.

It was previously announced that the FSIS Passenger Taxi will start working from September 1, 2023. The corresponding government decree was adopted at the end of July. The document provides that now in each region there will be three regional registers: carriers, cars and taxi ordering services.

Based on the data provided, the system of the Ministry of Transport will be an aggregator of information about taxi drivers and the companies in which they work: full name, company names, data on issued permits for taxi activities, driver’s license data, etc. All these data will be stored by the SIC of the Ministry of Transport.

To one degree or another, the listed data on taxi drivers are already aggregated in various databases, Luka Safonov, CEO of Cyberpolygon, draws attention. “The risks of the safety of this data, their leakage for various reasons are present. But this potential harm is less than the benefit of such data being better controlled and available to taxi users,” Safonov said. Positive Technologies security consultant Alexey Lukatsky agrees with him. According to him, for the most part, taxi drivers are not of interest to scammers and hackers, because they do not have significant financial savings.

FSIS is being created to make the market “transparent”: after its launch, taxi ordering services will be able to let only drivers with the appropriate work permits drive. Today, this restriction is spelled out in the legislation (a person must either formalize an employment relationship with a taxi company or register an individual entrepreneur), but drivers and ordering services can bypass it due to the lack of control and the presence of a large number of self-employed drivers on the market.

According to Stanislav Shvagerus, head of the Competence Center of the Taxi International Eurasian Forum, FSIS is necessary to ensure compliance with the requirements of the new federal law No. 580 “On organizing the transportation of passengers and luggage by passenger taxis”, adopted in December last year and coming into force in September 2023 “The law provides, in particular, for the creation and maintenance of registers in each region. But not every region has funds for such a register, or they are not kept in a single format and cannot be read by taxi ordering services. Therefore, aggregators in most regions cannot determine whether a particular driver is on the register or not. And they continue to give part of the orders to illegal immigrants, ”explains the expert.

He also draws attention to the fact that drivers registered with the tax as self-employed until the law comes into force (before September 1 this year) do not need special documents and permits, except for a driver’s license. Mandatory is only a permit for a car to work in a taxi, which is required to issue a taxi company (legal entity or individual entrepreneur). “From September 1, the rules are changing: an individual who has the status of a self-employed person must submit an application to the regional Ministry of Transport in order to obtain permission for himself. Separately, an agreement must be concluded with the aggregator (not yet determined by the Ministry of Transport of Russia – in paper or electronic form). And an entry should be made in the regional register for the car on which the transportation is carried out, ”says Schwagerus.

Sergey Semyonov, Director of the Department of State Policy in the Field of Automobile and Urban Passenger Transport of the Ministry of Transport, noted that all valid permits for taxi transportation (issued for a specific car, there are more than 450,000 of them today – Vedomosti) will continue to be valid after September 1. “For people who have received permits, nothing will change. Those who do not have permits will need to obtain them in accordance with the current procedure,” he said.

The connection of regions to the FSIS, according to Gorshkov, will begin on August 20. And downloading the entire registry “of several thousand entries” takes only about 30 minutes, he notes. In test mode, interaction in terms of downloading data, according to him, is already underway today with 73 regions.

Representative “Yandex Taxi told Vedomosti that the company is waiting for access to the FSIS and “introductory information” from its developers in order to start connecting. “Before the start of integration, it is premature to assess its timing and details of interaction,” he stressed.

A representative of Citymobil told Vedomosti that the company would not need to make additional investments in integration with the new FSIS. “We have created a working group on integration with FSIS, but it is still difficult to say how long all the necessary processes will take,” he added.

The press service of the taxi “Maxim” explained that taxi ordering services, in accordance with the law adopted at the end of 2022, must provide information about themselves by September 1 for inclusion in regional registers in each region of presence. In addition, from September 1, ordering services must check with regional registers that the carrier has a valid permit. “Until the appearance of such registers, we will not be able to check the carriers and open access to orders for them,” Maxim emphasizes. At the same time, the company emphasizes that the creation of a federal FSIS does not solve the problem with regional registries, which still do not exist. The main problem, according to a company representative, is that the regions are not ready to implement the provisions of the law on taxis.

According to some estimates, in some regions the share of the gray market reaches 90% of the total number of taxis, added the representative of the taxi “Maxim”. According to Schwagerus, in Russia today about 453,000 permits have been issued for cars legally used for transportation in passenger taxis, but about 1.5 million cars actually work in the industry.

An interlocutor of Vedomosti, close to the Ministry of Transport, believes that after the introduction of the FGIS, the prices for taxi transport may “grow for some time due to a sharp reduction in supply on the market.” But later they should come to a balance, as the carriers that are now working “in the gray” will be forced to enter the legal field, he is sure.

In July, Kommersant reported, citing data from the Index Check, that over the six months of 2023, the average taxi bill in Moscow increased by 12%, to 771 rubles, and by 4% in Russia as a whole, to 435 rubles. . year by year. Tinkoff Data estimates the growth of the average check in the Russian capital for six months by 15%, to 496 rubles, in Russia – by 11%, to 293 rubles.

Irina Zaripova, Chairman of the Public Council for Taxi Development, says that FSIS is a control system created for the regions to control the situation in taxis (obtaining information about carriers, drivers, etc.). The regions, according to her, are now actively preparing for its implementation. For example, in Kaluga it is already undergoing pilot testing. Therefore, the system will definitely work in Russia from September 1, there will be no serious problems with implementation, Zaripova is sure. “According to our estimates, a significant increase in the cost of taxi rides due to FSIS is not expected. The cost of trips is most strongly influenced by other factors: the price of buying a car and its maintenance and the increase in the cost of OSAGO,” she added. The representative of Citymobil also says that the rise in prices for taxi services is due to a combination of factors – this is, among other things, the growth of costs of taxi companies, the increase in the cost of cars and their maintenance, as well as the “complication of work processes.”