Outline of the Project

Project Name

Project for Modernization of Public Urban Transport in the City of Belgrade

Country

Serbia

Date R/D Signed

August 7, 2020

Project Site

The City of Belgrade

Term of Cooperation

From November 13, 2020 to November 10, 2023

Implementing Organization

The City of Belgrade, Secretariat for Public Transport

Background

As the capital of Republic of Serbia, Belgrade is the city with 1.75 million population (in 2019), where has been the administrative, cultural, educational center as well as the center of other socio-economic activities that attract many citizens to live in. The city area has been expanding and the population of the city is gradually growing. The main modes of daily trips of the citizens in Belgrade are public transport (47.9%), private car (25.7%) and walking (23.8%). In addition, out of the public transport, buses, trams and trolleybuses play an important role for the mobility of the citizen of Belgrade.

Since the first operation of public transport has started, the facility and equipment have been upgraded whenever the city's budget allowed. However, because of the rapid expansion of its area, population growth and the lack of the sufficient budget, the infrastructure is not matching to the ideal level today.

Under current situation, the city as administrator of buses, trams and trolleybuses observes following 3 main challenges in the public transport in Belgrade.

1) Current operation plan does not always match the actual trip demand. The city presents the operational plan to the Operators, however the plan needs to be supported by the statistical evidence of passenger data on each lines.

2) The second one is that the operator's income depends on the availability payments from the city, and the operator has not been able to raise funds for operational improvement. On the other hand, in the city, in addition to daily operation management and planning, the burden of operation monitoring for assessing payments to each operator is increasing. It is necessary to build a system that there are incentives to improve the performance of operators while controlling the operating costs of the city.

3) Third challenge is the low fare collection. The running cost including expenses to be paid to operators, is hardly collected by fare and the rest is covered by the city's financial resources, which is a major factor in financial pressure. It is a big concern about the sustainability of the public transport system.

Considering the situation above, the city has been making its best effort to provide sufficient public transport service and to try shifting eco-friendly system such as electric buses. However, it will not be difficult to solve those problems fundamentally unless financial resources are secured by efficient operation and improving the fare revenue.

Therefore, this project will support the development of ability of the city to improve public transportation services and fare collection, then to reduce the financial burden on the city of the public transportation sector for updating vehicle facilities that meet environmental standards. The purpose is to promote the construction of an environment-friendly public transportation system in the city by promoting the renewal of the bus and the introduction of electric buses.

The Overall Goal

Sustainability of Eco-friendly public transport in Belgrade is enhanced including eco-friendly approach.

Project Purpose

Ability of public transport operation of SfPT is improved.

Output

1. The ability of strategical, tactical and operational planning of SfPT is improved.
2. The ability of monitoring operators of SfPT is improved.
3. The ability for planning for securing fare collection of SfPT is improved.

Project Activities

1-1	To conduct travel demand survey along major routes and implement OJT on transport demand software.
1-2	To formulate operation and service plan which include optimum operation routes and frequencies based on the result of travel demand survey.
1-3	To propose integrated public transportation network to enhance intermodality including water transport, planned Metro lines, terminal access modes.
1-4	To examine the model of the demarcation of roles and responsibilities between SfPT and operators.
1-5	To create a list of improvement measures for operation management of public transportation.
1-6	To implement pilot projects to improve operation management, to formulate operation plan and route plan based on Activities 1-1 to 1-5.
2-1	To review the actual situation of Availability Payment and to consider new methods of the assessment for the payment to the operators.
2-2	To propose improvement plan of the way of monitoring the operators and to create basic specifications of necessary operation management system and equipment.
3-1	To review actual structure of fare collection and to identify the issues to be addressed.
3-2	To formulate an improvement plan list for prevention of free ride.
3-3	To formulate an improvement plan list for operation service level and convenience.
3-4	To conduct demonstration projects on pilot routes to improve fare collection based on Activities 3-2 and 3-3.
3-5	To carry out public relations activities to raise awareness of the importance of fare collection.

Inputs
[Japanese side]

• Experts team
• Counterpart training in Japan and the third countries
• Organize seminars / workshops
• Invitation

[Serbian side]

• Assign counterpart personnel
• Provision of office space
• Arrangements for seminars / workshops