Transfers, ticket price increases and… lawsuits!

With ticket revaluations from February 1, and 1.500 staff transfers starts the plan for the consolidation of urban transport, amidst the peaking of strikes estimated to be ignited by the suit filed by the ILPAP administration against its workers.

Following the inducements of minister Dimitris Reppas, asking them to protect the interests of transport against union people that show their fists to society, the administrations of urban transport are moving against them. So the trolley buses administration filed a suit with the charge that its workers sealed off the ticket validation machines, thereby damaging the organization.  

With the government watching in great discomfiture the tight circle of strikes that is paralyzing the market and enraging passengers, Reppas is presenting the consolidation plan for transportation today.

Starting with tickets, the ministry is directed towards two types, one at 1,20 euro for a single journey on any means and another at 1,40 euro for multiple routes instead of today’s 1-euro ticket of 90 minutes, which is thought to have incurred losses for OASA.

On the transfers issue, the OSE model is being implemented, but the transfers for the extra staff will come first and then the rest, after the mergers and the new charts. New rules of labor will apply, with the trimming of secondary earnings at 10% of the regular ones.

The highest gross annual income will be 48.00 euros, while no cuts have been regulated for earnings of less than 1.800 euros/m. The new wages include basic, time and family allowance, as well as position and academic qualifications. As government members say, we need to cut the uneven and excessive payrolls in urban transport that produce an annual deficit of 755mil euros.

Intensive checks are also introduced against fare evasion, which reaches 40% for buses, by a single body of fare controllers that will belong operationally to OASA and have the responsibility of all  transport means.

OASA will develop into a Metropolitan Agency with its activities extending throughout Attica. The companies that are supplying and implementing the transportation project will merge into two bodies: one for the Stable Route means (STAME or STASY), which will incorporate AMEL, ISAP and TRAM, and one for the Road Transport Means (OME or OSY), which will consist of ETHEL and ILPAP.

Specific criteria and conditions have been adopted for granting state subsidies each year as well as quarterly accounts with performance indicators to monitor the operational schedule of public transport operators.

The aim of these structural measures is revenue enhancement and rationalization of operating costs. Through last year's interventions of reducing personnel costs, losses reached 389mil euros, decreased by 83mil as compared to 2009.

It is estimated that for 2011, these actions will reduce reduce losses to 244mil euros, contributed to by 88mil from revenue and 156mil from expenditure. The operational deficit is estimated to reach 155mil euros in 2011 and decrease by 20% in the following years.