Such a measure would be beneficial for large carriers
In Russia they are again talking about the need for relief for taxi drivers. This time, the Public Council for Taxi Development appealed to the Federation Council — they propose to allow migrants with foreign licenses to work as taxi drivers. Social activists say: this way you can overcome the high cost of travel. However, perhaps the point is completely different: allowing migrants without Russian licenses to drive taxis opens the way to the creation of Soviet-style monopoly taxi companies. Like in the USSR, only without the prestige of the profession.
So far, the appeal of the Public Council for Taxi Development concerns a temporary measure — it is proposed to allow migrants without valid licenses in Russia to be allowed to transport them for the next two years. Let us remind you that now in the Russian Federation, for a professional driver (and not a motor tourist), the licenses of Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and other countries with Russian as the official language are valid.
But, for example, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, vast and rich in human resources, cannot supply drivers en masse to Russia. To work in taxis and other commercial transportation, citizens of these countries (including those who are naturalized, but do not have a Russian driver's license) need to retake exams and obtain a Russian license. It is them who the OSRT is asking to be allowed into the steering wheel now in order to eliminate the shortage of workers in this industry.
“We propose to allow temporary admission of migrants behind the wheel of a taxi under strict control, for which we now have all the technical capabilities in the form of Insurance Telematics technology,” noted the head of the council, Irina Zaripova. Social activists, according to her, sent an appeal to the first deputy head of the Senate Committee on Economic Policy, Alexei Sinitsyn. It was this senator who, at a recent round table in the Federation Council, asked taxi market players to formulate their proposals to improve the situation.
There has been a shortage of taxi drivers since the beginning of this year, added Irina Zaripova. She suggested that one of the reasons is a decrease in blue-collar unemployment, as a result of which many professionals returned to factories in light of the state request for import substitution and an increase in state defense orders. In addition, drivers, especially those with cargo categories, are in demand in the Armed Forces (many were called up for mobilization last year, some sign a contract as volunteers), the social activist emphasized. Chairman of the All-Russian Association of Passengers Ilya Zotov also agreed that attracting those migrants who currently do not have the right to professional work as drivers in Russia could alleviate the shortage of taxi drivers and make trips affordable.Meanwhile, representatives of the taxi industry interviewed by MK generally did not confirm that the reason for the decrease in the number of cars available for order is a shortage of drivers. “I will shrink the number of cars to 7-8,” the owner of a small metropolitan taxi fleet with 15 cars, five of which appeared at the beginning of 2023, told MK. — Several of my cars are actually on long-term sublease, two are standing and not being used. At the same time, there are Kyrgyz drivers with valid licenses in Russia, but they went on delivery trips in their old cars. The reason is that they don’t want to bother with registers or undergo daily medical examinations; for them, the difference between the income from courier work and what they can earn with passengers does not pay for this hemorrhoids. And what will permission give me to drive for Uzbeks, who will also need to enter the registry?
According to MK’s interlocutor, the initiative under discussion can only be useful for the largest carriers, with more than a hundred vehicles in their fleet. “A large taxi company can actually hire such drivers, it will be cheaper; and also hire a couple of lawyers who will draw up all these things for them and work with registers,” the carrier suggests. — They will work for a salary, and not piecework, like on a bus. It may very well be that you can even make money from this, it all depends on your friendship with aggregators and on tariffs in general. But the threshold for “entry” in such a business is billions, this is not my scale.”
Indeed, many leading market players and experts in recent years, discussing the taxi industry (as it developed in the 2010s), emphasized: state regulation of taxis as a type of public transport does not make sense in a situation of “uberization” of transportation. After all, the sea of private small carriers, up to individuals with one car, is not the Soviet Avtolegtrans system with its taxi fleets, where it was possible to provide any kind of medical and technical examination of drivers and vehicles.
True, almost always these arguments a couple of years ago ended with the statement: in our conditions it is impossible to revive taxi companies, because we are in a market economy. However, strict regulation gives preferences specifically to large companies, and the objectively existing shortage of drivers can be replenished by their targeted import from those countries whose driver’s licenses are not yet recognized in the Russian Federation. Two owners of small taxi fleets interviewed by MK said that they had heard about projects to create large taxi fleets, “like in the USSR,” at least in Moscow.
The aforementioned Senator Alexei Sinitsyn also agreed that the outflow of drivers from the current system occurs precisely because the requirements of the Taxi Law in force since September 2023 are too stringent—this is exactly the position he voiced at the December “round table” in the Federation Council. But as for the figures for this deficit, the testimony of different experts and responsible persons differs. According to the analytical center under the Government of the Russian Federation, we are talking about 72 thousand drivers. The largest Russian aggregator gives almost the same figures: 80 thousand new drivers are needed to smooth out the peaks of the shortage. Representatives of a competing taxi operator talk about large numbers — up to 700 thousand people.
But according to the head of the Union of Self-Employed People of Russia Igor Zhmakin, Russia may lack 2.5 million taxi drivers altogether. His logic is as follows: in order to normalize the situation, the country needs approximately 5 million “cab drivers”; now there are a little more than 2 million. The missing figure is how many people need to be brought to the market. Perhaps it is this very representative “clearing” that those who plan to develop large taxi fleets based on migrant drivers are counting on?
It’s just worth recalling that the end of Moscow’s large taxi fleets in the 2000s was the “riots” drivers — they demanded more favorable tariffs. “Uberization” and “decentralization” came in response… Whether carriers of the caliber of transport companies will be able to keep hundreds of migrant drivers in obedience is not clear: most recently, those who started clashes with the police on Verkhnie Polya Street were taxi drivers.