Regional news, behind which lies a practice of federal significance. The city of Perm, as part of the Comprehensive Development of Urban Ground Transport, received 44 modern single-section trams, 30 of which have already been put on routes. The transport is equipped with a climate control system, media panels, validators for cashless payments and USB ports for charging. In addition to the new trams, 16 modern and high-tech electric buses have also begun to operate in the city. And this is only part of the large-scale changes – the modernization of tram lines and infrastructure is in the active phase.
Photo: TG-channel Perm transport
De facto, the Perm transport system has already been rebooted. Intelligent transport systems are functioning in the city, 7 out of 8 modules of the digital public transport management platform have been implemented.
What makes this case noteworthy: the supply of electric transport was envisaged within the framework of the region's concession agreement with business structures and was calculated until 2025. Now the agreement has been fully implemented before the end of the term. Such an important logistics issue for the city, thanks to the cooperation of regional authorities and private business, was resolved in the shortest possible time, making public transport for Perm residents more convenient, more efficient, and ultimately cheaper (including due to the optimization of the route network and more modern transport). Moreover, Perm residents themselves were involved in the reorganization. They were the ones who decided which routes were necessary and which ones should be eliminated (thereby reducing the load on the infrastructure and the fleet).
This is an important example of projects implemented through the concession mechanism (in a broader sense — public-private partnership or abbreviated — PPP), which is successfully used in other Russian regions. However, in many cases — as in Perm — VEB builds bridges between private capital and government structures (in this particular case, on behalf of the government, the corporation acts as a financing organization, a project office for the program, and also its coordinator). The organization provides accumulated competencies: it conducts the necessary examination of investment projects, provides advisory and legal support to the authorities, and monitors implementation. In fact, the participation of the state corporation becomes a kind of important stabilizing factor, which in the current conditions is an extremely important signal for a private investor who values predictability and results.
The PPP mechanism is interesting for businesses. In the conditions of the current tight monetary policy, even large companies limit their investment plans. PPP projects, in which the participation of a state customer will reduce risks and increase the financial sustainability of the project, are a kind of «win-win»: entrepreneurs receive a project with a clear payback, the region — the necessary infrastructure or industrial facility, the national economy — additional jobs and taxes. In the future, it is PPP that can become the much-needed «starter» for the declared transformation of the Russian economy.
According to the rating of the quality of life in Russian cities, which is annually compiled by the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Perm today is among the cities with fairly high quality of life indicators. And this is due to the efforts to develop the city, made by regional authorities in cooperation with external investors.