Hard truth for you: no matter how good you think your local, public mass transit system is, it still pales to what they’ve got in Mariupol. And Mariupol is the 10th largest city in Ukraine; the top nine might even put Mariupol to shame. Granted, our buses and trains are probably a bit cleaner, a bit better for the environment, and generally a nicer ride (OK, that’s how it is for Portland, and Boulder a bit too; I don’t really know about the rest of the country), but the system there is cheap, has plentiful buses, and runs nearly around the clock.
Alternatives to hoofing it
Last time in Ukraine, I got around solely by foot power (unless you could the four airplane flights, and four car trips to and from the airports). Given that I wasn’t interested in hopping on a bus and ending up miles away from my apartments with no good idea on how I’d get back, walking the nearby neighborhoods seemed the best way to go. This time around, that was generally going to be my plan again, but as it happens I got a good initiation into bus travel in and around Mariupol.
There are actually several ways of getting around town. There is walking, of course, and if you have the cash, cars are available. (Sorry, I really couldn’t tell if there were more cars this year than last.) By and large, though, people get around by bus… or by electric bus, or by trolley. Or, if you happened to work for Illyich Steel, possibly by electric light rail train. (Yes, the second largest steelmaker in Mariupol actually has their own light rail system to move people around town and between their different locations.)
Buses are the big thing, although I mean big only in the sense of quantity, not size. You know the “short” school bus? Well, imagine a city filled with hundreds of those — and none of the big, “regular” buses. That’s what Mariupol is like. These yellow buses have seats for 25-30 people, and are usually filled to capacity and then some. Fortunately, there are lots of buses, so if you miss one, or it’s just too full, another one will be by in just a couple minutes.
Riding the bus is interesting (and even more so when you’re not sure where you will end up). On buses here in Portland, you board at the front, put your fare into the fare box and get a transfer/receipt from the bus driver, or you show a bus pass. Once everyone is on and their fares have been paid or checked, off you go. That’s not quite how it works in Mariupol. You board through either the front or back doors, and there is often a “bus monitor” (for want of a better description) who keeps visual track of who as boarded the bus. This bus monitor is the person who collects the fares and checks passes. There are no transfers, and only about half of the buses I was on gave a receipt for your fare. On some smaller buses, there isn’t a bus monitor and you pay your fare directly to the driver.
Here in the US, there seem to be plenty of people who will try to ride the bus for free (by sneaking in the back door, jumping a turnstile, using a slug or whatever). Because of this, I was stunned by the honestly of Mariupol’s bus riders. I never saw anyone trying to skip out of a fare, and it would have been easy on some of those buses without a monitor. It’s like they use the honor system, and everyone honors it. In fact, on some of the more crowded trips, passengers would help people in the back by passing fare money up to the bus monitor, and even more impressive, passing the change back.
I think there is one big reason why the bus system doesn’t do transfers, and why people aren’t always trying to scam a free ride: it’s freakishly cheap to ride the bus. The fares around town are 2, 2.50 or 3 UAH; this equates to between 25 and 45 cents, and that’s with rounding up. I know people don’t earn a ton of money there, but with an average monthly salary of between $300 and $350 (2400 – 2800 UAH), it seems most everybody can swing a couple hryvnia for a ride.
E-buses and trolleys and trams… oh my!
As I said above, the public transportation system in Mariupol has a few different flavors. Buses — gas-powered ones — are the main thing, and the only thing I added to my travel experiences in this visit. There are also some electric buses, mostly on the main thoroughfares. These were more of the “standard” bus-sized buses. They have a couple poles that stick up from the top and ride along power wires that are strung over the streets. They seem to work pretty well, although the buses didn’t seem to have a lot of power to them. Also, the power poles would sometimes come off the wires, so the bus driver would have to get out and re-connect them.
The trolley cars were interesting — kind of like Portland’s MAX light rail system, only older. Like the electric buses, these too drew their power from overhead lines, and they ran on rail tracks down the middle of the street. This middle of the street thing made for some interest scenes. One of the streets where the trolley ran was fairly busy and had a lot of car traffic. Since the trolley stops in the middle of the street, people getting on and off basically have to dodge traffic. All the excitement of crossing a busy street without the benefit of a crosswalk. It seems to me that wouldn’t be a big selling point for mass transit systems.
While I may have an opportunity to try the trolley or an electric bus on a future visit, it seems like that private light rail system would be off limits to me. To be honest, I’m not sure I have the story completely right — I still suffer from a bit of language gap — but I suppose that any company with enough clout could get most any government to help them build something, even if it impacts the public right-of-way. But private or not, the one rail car I saw using those tracks was not at all zippy. Speed-wise, it looked like it could have been for tourists.
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The agony of the feet
Even with a fairly extensive transit system, lots of people just walked. People would be walking everywhere, even along the highway to Donetsk. (On the trip back to the airport, there was a nicely dressed woman in heels walking along the left side of highway; that just seemed wrong all over.) But most of the pedestrian traffic was there in Mariupol.
Crosswalks in Ukraine seem to come in three flavors: the signaled crosswalk, the two-color crosswalk, and the single-color “I dare you to cross” cross-walk. The signaled crosswalk is at intersections with traffic signals, and drivers are usually quite good about stopping and letting pedestrians cross. However, they get as close as absolutely possible to the crosswalk, without actually crossing the plane that would put them in the crosswalk. They won’t hit you in the crosswalk, but I think they want to make it perfectly clear that they could have if they had wanted to.
As relatively safe and secure as the signaled crosswalk is, two-color crosswalk might even be safer. I’ve only seen two of these — one in Donetsk and one in Mariupol — and I’m not completely sure about all the rules about them. The one in Donetsk was at a signal, but the one in Mariupol is just across some street. For both of them, though, traffic would absolutely stop whenever anyone was in the crosswalk. Even better, unlike the signaled crosswalk, cars didn’t crowd up against it. These must be special in some way, and it’s probably something that everyone (except a tourist like me) knows.
Lastly, there’s the “cross if you dare” crosswalk. These are the common crosswalks you’ll find just about everywhere, neighborhoods as well as busy streets. Technically cars are supposed to yield — and to be fair, they almost always do. However, these are more like US crosswalks: although you may legally have the right-of-way, the laws of physics suggest that the car would have the advantage if push came to shove. Still, as long as you use some common sense — and whenever possible, stare down a driver who is coming your way (but do it without actually stopping in the crosswalk) — you’ll get to the other side just fine.
Short Hops
- Like I said, if you have the cash, you can probably get a car. It seemed like there were only nicer, new cars or beat up older ones on the roads, and most of the older ones tended to be Russian Ladas. There are newer Ladas too (still made in Russia and actually looking pretty nice), plus a lot of Renaults and Toyotas. I did see a couple Fords, but the American auto makers are definitely not well represented in Mariupol.
- I got to watching the traffic during my rides to and from the airport in Donetsk (there wasn’t much else to do since my driver didn’t speak much English). I wasn’t playing full attention for 90+ minutes, but when I was, I noticed that I didn’t see any cars with just one occupant. Some of the trucks, sure, but for the personal cars — there were always two or more people. I don’t think it’s a carpooling kick.
- In case you were wondering, the price of gas is a bit higher than here in the US — but surprisingly, not by much. Prices in Portland have been running around $4 per gallon for a while; it may be a little higher or lower where you are. Most of the prices I saw in Ukraine were around 10 UAH per liter. Now for some conversion math, which will be rough and rounded: there are about 4 liters in a gallon, so a gallon of gas is 40 UAH. Since it’s about 8 UAH to 1 USD, their gas prices are around $5/gallon. Although that’s a sucky price anywhere, when you consider that the average monthly income in Mariupol is around $300-350, we’re talking some pretty pricey fuel.
- The buses in Mariupol are not air conditioned; this may also be true elsewhere, although in Donetsk I did see a bus very much like the ones we have in Portland, so who knows? To help make the ride a little more tolerable on those hot, sunny summer days, the buses have curtains. I thought this was very cute.
- Of course there is some etiquette to riding a bus, and while I didn’t make a complete fool of myself, I did discover that I wasn’t doing a couple things right. If you’re standing on a bus, you are probably going to be facing forward, right? So you can see where you need to get off? That’s what I did, and I was the only one. Most people, if they have to stand in the aisle, face the side windows. Maybe this lets more people ride or makes it easier to get on and off. So I have that to learn, and apparently I need to be more aware of my possessions on the bus. Two nice ladies told me (mostly through pointing and gestures) that I should keep my messenger bag zipped up, and instead of slinging it across my back or at my side, keep it on my lap. I didn’t have any trouble during any of my rides, but since I’m sure I looked out of place, I know they were just being to be helpful. It was very nice of them.