Patrycja 🔜 V43critter of the day: this absolutely cute minibus that Szczecin ZDiTM uses for small bus lines
Inga stands with 🇺🇦 🇵🇸
@ptrc looks like a regular marshrutka to me
@IngaLovinde i looked the concept up and that's just "small bus but privatized and usually worse"
@ptrc "small bus" is the key here, any vehicle like that is (almost always) privatized.
Also depends on your definition of worse, they typically serve routes abandoned by municipal transit (or complement municipal transit), with intervals that actually make sense. For example, municipal bus can depart every two hours on schedule, while a marshrutka would depart the terminus as soon as it is sufficiently full (which might mean intervals as low as a couple of minutes in rush hours, especially on feeder routes flexibly adapting to mass rapid transit arrival / departure on suburban routes).
They used to almost universally be served by Gazelle minibuses, but in the late 2010s at least in Moscow region many operators started switching to the equivalent Mercedes vehicles (much welcome because one can stand in Mercedes at full height without having to keep their head down) or to Gazelle Next (Gazelle Next Citiline in Moscow, where minibuses were nationalized and integrated ~15 years ago but are still called marshrutkas; and also Citiline in some other cities around Moscow).
It's just that they all look similar to your photo, and I've just realized that I've never seen them in Germany (but saw them in Italy as a privatized minibus connecting a bunch of villages in Lazio to the train station, mostly serving school kids when we were talking it)
Lach Anonym's PT@IngaLovinde @ptrc the thing is marshrutka was made to compete on the main routes in the city, eventually to serve some villages.
In Poland it is/was a thing not as a "taxi", but just private buses, mainly Mercedeses Sprinters and such, something just like the UK bus privatisation. Thankfully in most cases they did not run urban routes or failed there after some time.
The thing Szczecin does, is an on-demand bus, serving hardly accessible areas where running regular lines does not pay off. And I love it!
In Poland it is/was a thing not as a "taxi", but just private buses, mainly Mercedeses Sprinters and such, something just like the UK bus privatisation. Thankfully in most cases they did not run urban routes or failed there after some time.
The thing Szczecin does, is an on-demand bus, serving hardly accessible areas where running regular lines does not pay off. And I love it!
@LachAnonym @IngaLovinde in this case it's not an on-demand line actually, it's a standard line with a 20 minute schedule each way, all day from 5 until 22 ( which is an amazing schedule, not gonna lie ); however, the on-demand lines are also a really nice touch, with taxis provided by the city if they can't send a proper bus
and to me, the main difference between what we have in Poland vs Russian marshrutkas is the "privatized and with no proper schedule" part - Szczecin's ZDiTM, Poznań's ZTM, Silesian Metropolis' ZTM and Warsaw's WTP all run small buses as part of regular scheduled lines within public transport
@LachAnonym @IngaLovinde er, the 20 minute schedule is the sunday one, on all other days it's closer to 15 through most of the day
Jeder 
@ptrc @LachAnonym @IngaLovinde yeah like, this is what the "regional bus network" looks like in my area, all privatised, but this guy from the Wrocław line lately decided that he has had enough, said that he earns more money doing actual public transport and bailed out, after few months Polbus-PKS (inappropriate name for PKS Wrocław/state-run bus operator) took over the line, with not that great schedule but with Setra coaches
@jeder @ptrc @LachAnonym these marshrutkas in Moscow suburbs I mentioned? Municipal buses (PAZ-3205 on half of the routes, more modern full-size buses on others) were only serving some of the routes marshrutkas did, and only once per hour / two hours (which is... not very efficient when people de facto also use it as a feeder bus for trains of which there are like ten per hour).
On the other hand they were serving full interurban routes (e.g. linking Pushkino to Ivanteyevka or Korolyov), while marshrutkas were only covering the urban part.
On the other hand they were serving full interurban routes (e.g. linking Pushkino to Ivanteyevka or Korolyov), while marshrutkas were only covering the urban part.
I dream that one time in Poland there would be one transport authority for, say, each voivodeship, with one tariff and reasonable transport network... #publictransport #integratedtransport