The issue of the reform of public transport in Odessa has been raised several times over the past 20 years. However, no strategic decisions were made.

The beginning of the "new era" of public transport in Odessa is connected with the first cadenza of Eduard Hurwitz. It was then that the first "Soviet" bus routes sent the first "minibuses". In fact, then no revision of the Soviet transport system was made: just replaced the dead by that time, "Ikarus" and "Liaz" for minibuses of different composition, mainly "raffiki".

Then came the epoch of Ruslan Bodelan. The public was offered giant strategic solutions without the slightest explanation of how they could be realized. The apotheosis of this was the idea that fell into the strategic objectives of the General Plan: the transfer of the railway station to the outskirts of the city and the restructuring of the entire central part of the city, taking into account the release of the area around the railway station. Manilovshchina in its pure form, as the idea required billions of investments.

But in practice, decisions were made that inevitably led to a "strangulation" of the transport system. For example, it was under Ruslan Bodelan that the main "needle eye" of the Odessa transport system was created: a traffic junction on Ekaterininskaya Street near Privoz. This place today "costs" the urban transport system thousands of hours of downtime. It is curious that Felix Kobrinsky in the late 90's, almost immediately after Ruslan Bodelan's coming to power, wrote to him that it is impossible to combine in this place trading floors and traffic interchanges. Unfortunately, his appeals were not heard.

The second cadence of Edward Hurwitz was marked by the first attempts to comprehend the transport situation of the city. At this time, the number of cars in Odessa grew almost in geometric progress, and it became clear to everyone that Odessa lives on the eve of the transport collapse. We were saved by the crisis when the Odessa citizens stopped buying cars, like hot cakes, but the situation with public transport did not improve.

It was during the second cadenza of Eduard Hurwitz that proposals appeared, first, to conduct a logistical analysis of the transport routes of Odessa (which had not been analyzed since the time of the USSR) and to create a new scheme of urban routes. Secondly, the concept of a new transportation scheme in Odessa was developed, which would include a single scheme for the movement of buses, trolleybuses and trams, as well as the creation of several major transplant sites in the city, primarily the railway station and the Peresypsky Bridge.

It was at this time also the idea of ??creating a "light metro" (high-speed tram). He had to go from the village of Kotovsky to the Peresypsky bridge either along a dedicated strip (high-speed tram) or on poles ("light metro"),. Then he would go underground to the railway station or the Kulikovo field. And already from there again would go out to the surface - either in the form of a high-speed tram, or in the form of a "light metro" - and would go to the living room of Tairov.

At the same time, the idea arose to create two circular transport routes in the city (clockwise and counterclockwise), which would have to replace all routes in the center of Odessa.

Unfortunately, all these projects required a strategic vision, but with this in Odessa there have always been problems.

The main problem of today's Odessa is not even the narrowness of the streets, but the combination in our center of the business segment, the government segment, the tourist and residential segments. That is why attempts during the cadence of Edward Hurwitz, and during the cadence of Ruslan Bodelan to introduce in Odessa a system of restriction of entry to the center, in my opinion, were absolutely unpromising. Such a system requires a high degree of citizens' trust in regulators of traffic flows, otherwise this will turn into another system of corruption (extortion).

If we talk about a real plan of change, I would single out several stages.

First. Collection of information.

To date, using the data of mobile operators, you can relatively accurately determine the movement of people within Odessa. For this, it is no longer necessary to conduct expensive studies, you can simply analyze the data of mobile operators. This will help to understand: how many people and at what time are moving along the roads of Odessa. Thanks to this information, it is possible to create a system of transport graphs that can become the basis for a logistical analysis of the city's transport system.

Second. Strategic solutions.

It is necessary to conduct a series of discussions on possible solutions to the transport problem in Odessa. That is, to understand what and where it is possible and necessary to transfer, where it is possible and necessary to build intercepting parking lots, what transport solutions can be implemented in Odessa: high-speed tram, "light metro", wireless trolley buses, express buses, bus subway (following the example of a number of Brazilian cities, following the example of Haifa) and t. Can I use lanes for public transport in Odessa? Is it possible to transfer part of the public and business facilities to other parts of the city (not the center), to create a business center in Odessa (on the outskirts), the industrial zone of Odessa and.

The third. Priorities for investors.

Reform of the transport structure of Odessa is impossible without very large investments. So we need to understand what guarantees can be given to investors, what kind of investments are needed in the first, which in the second, and which ones - in the third turn? What business model will make it possible to recoup these investments?.

Fourth. Reform of public transport itself.

First of all, we need to understand how to create a competitive environment in this area. In my opinion, this is the most important issue, since the attempt to build a scheme for one super-monopolist in our conditions is a dead end. By the way, even the citizens of Odessa, who answered the questions of our questionnaire on the reform of public transport, constantly emphasized the need for competition in this sphere.

Odessa citizens do not believe in monopolies. It is a fact!.

(To be continued).