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On 28 May, Kazakhstan Transport Minister Marat Karabaev and Astana’s Mayor Zhenis Kasymbek attended a demonstration of advantages afforded to citizens with special physical needs and impaired mobility by vehicles adapted to serve their needs. Back in 2008, the Saby Charitable Foundation provided 16 Kazakh cities with a fleet of 62 Invataxis. Equipped with wheelchair-friendly hydraulic lifts, the specially adapted minivans have long facilitated travel for adults and children, opened up opportunities for work and study, and contributed towards their social integration. Since then, the Ministry of Transport in collaboration with local executive bodies, has continued to expand the fleet across Kazakhstan and this year alone, the number of Invataxis operating in the capital has risen by 26 to 145. A total of 119 Invataxi services with the combined fleet of 760 vehicles currently operate in the country’s regions.
Uzbekistan’s Transport Ministry has announced plans to launch ten new international bus routes during this year. The new routes will connect Samarkand and Bukhara with Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek; Bukhara with Kazakhstan’s capital Astana; Samarkand, Bukhara and Shakhrisabz with Turkestan in Kazakhstan; Samarkand and Bukhara with in Tajikistan’s capital Dushanbe, and Tashkent with Ufa and Krasnodar in Russia. Uzbekistan currently runs 196 buses operated by 32 domestic and foreign companies,on 37 routes to Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. From January-April 2024, 173 thousand passengers travelled on international bus routes, 15% more than during the same period in 2023.
A campaign has been launched to prevent plans by the municipality of Bishkek to replace its trolleybuses with electric buses. According to a statement issued by the Bishkek municipality, “the issue of transferring trolleybuses along with their contact network and traction substations to the cities of Osh, Kara-Balta and Tokmok for their further operation there, is under consideration”. A key objection raised by the Save Bishkek Trolleybus campaign is that since the five proposed electric bus routes will simply replicate the existing trolleybus routes, the city will lose its existing network of environmentally- friendly public transport that introduced in the Soviet era, has been operating for many decades. The Save Bishkek Trolleybus has now launched an online petition to preserve its favoured mode of transport. According to the group behind the new initiative, the reason for abandoning the trolleybus network relates to the fact that one of the conditions of funding by the Asian Development Bank for electric public transport in Bishkek , was the replacement of trolleybus depots with new depots and substations to recharge electric buses. Kadyrbek Atambayev, leader of the Social Democratic faction in Bishkek’s City Council, argues that Bishkek’s trolleybus system should be developed, not eliminated. Regarding cost, he emphasizes that electric buses are four times more expensive than trolleybuses. The price of 100-120 electric buses along with charging stations is $50 million, while in 2017, 52 trolleybuses were purchased for 7 million euros. He also drew attention to the fact that operating batteries during Bishkek's cold winters would increase energy consumption and reduce the efficiency of electric buses. In his opinion, the liquidation of the trolleybus system would mean not only the loss of a convenient and affordable mode of public transport, but also the loss of a significant part of Bishkek’s cultural heritage.
