Drivers of Chisinau’s share taxis, colloquially known as rutiera, commit a serious moving violation every minute, traffic police found after analyzing traffic camera footage.
Most frequent violations include failure to yield to pedestrians, picking up or dropping passengers off in inappropriate places, and failure to signal for lane changes.
The police also warn rutiera drivers to refrain from starting the vehicle in motion with the passenger door still open and from overcrowding the vehicle. Picking up and dropping off passengers should be done only at designated stops. Another requirement is to keep the vehicles in a good technical condition at all times.
The police will carry out inspections until March 31 and a report will follow.
The convenience of stopping a rutiera anywhere on the street to board or get off, slighter faster speeds compared to trolleybuses and busses at comparable fares, and a very dense network of routes all over the city made the rutiera minibuses perhaps the most popular mode of transport among Chisinau residents for many years. It also meant that the higher-capacity public transport was losing revenue to the privately owned ruiteras, and on increasingly crowded roads too. The rutiera operators were repeatedly unable to convince the municipality to let them increase the fare from the current 3 lei amid increasingly rising costs, forcing operators to increase headways and run the minibuses beyond capacity almost always, further raising safety concerns. Many minibus routes have shut down in recent years.
