Abstract
Transport specialists in the USSR persistently called for mathematical expressions of fundamental laws in urban transportation, to assist the development of efficient transportation systems. However, the specificity of the planned economy meant that these appeals did not receive substantial financial support. In response to challenges such as falsified data and political interference, practitioners developed an “imaginative” approach based on intuition, tradition and experience. Analysis of academic literature written in Russian, archival sources and new data gained from interviews shows that the demand for quantitative methods was a bureaucratic response to the uncertainties of public transport administration, while planning documents functioned as leverage in political bargaining for resources. In practice, urban transport planners and transport company employees relied on their own creativity and innovation to compensate for pervasive resource and methodological deficits.
Introduction
Immediately prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the rate of car ownership was comparable to that of the USA in 1918. The reasons for the USSR's almost-car-free society are well known and framed as a consequence of the socialist “shortage economy”, 1 the administrative distribution of new cars and a thriving second-hand black market. 2 In contrast, the recipe for successfully establishing a socially orientated response to such conditions – namely a public transport-oriented society – is less clear.
However, the call for such guidance persists in present day transportation planning and administration. A number of transportation scholars frame the mainstream approach to planning and administration as very much in line with neoclassical economic thought 3 – focusing on economic growth, 4 technological innovation 5 and the hegemony of Global North knowledge production. 6 Aside from conceptual criticism, the first bottom-up initiatives in the field are noticed. 7 To put it briefly, emerging critical attention to transportation issues is developing through the scrutiny of conventional knowledge production and the simultaneous search for alternatives to such.
This paper describes the production of transport-related knowledge in the historical context of the USSR's planned economy. Despite emerging interest in the transportation legacy of the USSR, 8 the available literature on this topic remains scarce. Transportation issues in the USSR gained international attention in the 1970s. White (1979) addressed specific literature on, for example, modal split forecasts, travel time savings and land use policies. 9 This overview of mainly technical issues based on strategic documents was supplemented by Crouch's (1979) analysis of the Soviet administration of transport systems, which describes an interplay of power hierarchies in relation to the delivery of transport services. 10 Hill's (1977) analysis of local political elites 11 also provided insights into the decision-making process around constructing a new trolleybus depot in the city of Tiraspol in the 1960s.
A Kharkov-based engineer published a manuscript in 1936 criticising the “irrational, intuitive and tradition-oriented approach” of transport and urban planners. This emphasised the fundamental correlation between distance and transport usage as a central consideration for urban and transportation planning. 12 This issue subsequently received much attention during the USSR's existence, and I would argue that this “irrational, intuitive and tradition-oriented approach” of planners and managers persists today. It is this adaptive approach – imposed on and adopted by transportation planners – that I term “imaginative”. Douglas Uzzel introduced a similar concept of “generative” planning of informal transport companies in 1987, in contrast to “coercive” state bureaucracy. 13 In this sense, “imagination” has a different empirical justification that also embraces the formal sector.
The economic challenges associated with public transport forced bureaucrats in the USSR to tackle issues of inefficiency by promoting “scientific”, data-driven, mathematically “beautiful” solutions. However, due to the administrative specificities of a planned economy and contentious responses from transportation companies, the widespread introduction of quantitative approaches to planning and management faced significant barriers.
Apart from a review of primarily academic Russian-language sources dating from the USSR, this article is based on interviews with retired planners and architects from Moscow and St. Petersburg, and presents insights from a workshop with transportation planners that took place in St. Petersburg in December 2021. I also conducted fieldwork in Ulyanovsk in February and March 2022 with the aim of basing available data empirically. I collected archival data, and interviewed officials, planners, architects and employees of a municipal public transport company.
The law of labour settlement
In 2001, a group of Russian urban transport specialists established a professional award for remarkable achievements in theoretical and practical fields. The award was named after Aleksey Polyakov, who began his career as an engineer and later worked as a research associate in various transportation-related scientific entities. The award acknowledges Polyakov's contribution to knowledge about transportation systems in the Russian language, including the following from 1958: Existing practice of road network planning and reconstruction efforts shows the domination of expert appraisals and intuitive solutions without elaborated calculations, due to the absence of accurate data gained from regular surveys of vehicle, passenger, freight and pedestrian traffic.
14
Two approaches were used for forecasts after WWII. 20 The first utilised ridership numbers, with a relatively straightforward method of counting work-related trips combined with workforce size and the working schedules of local industry. In doing so, planners simply exported data from the available statistics. Specific coefficients were used for non-work activities. A simple scaling factor (e.g. work trips × 0.8) estimated the number of trips for leisure activities. 21 A small number of travel surveys in the largest cities provided an empirical foundation for such assumptions.
The second forecasting method was based on the spatial correlation between places of residence and work. The first description of this relationship was published in 1936. 22 The initial correlation between workforce size and commuting distance was also improved by replacing distance with travel time. 23 Nonetheless, the author of this improvement highlighted that “an appropriate, objective method for forecasting travel behaviour is absent”. 24 This correlation was titled “the law of labour gravitation” 25 or “law of labour settlement”. Its visualisation shows a so-called veroyatnost’ rasseleniya (probability of settlement) as a relationship between the percentage of workers and commuting distance (or travel time). This pattern allowed planners to forecast the intensity of travel. Specialists calculated both passenger volumes and travel directions. However, despite appearing in numerous textbooks, by the early 1980s the evidence for such dependencies remained based on fewer than ten empirical studies. 26
The emphasis on a “fundamental law” in the planning approach had twofold consequences. Firstly, it led to a non-humanistic and technocratic framework. “The main object for transport studies is the city rather than the average passenger”. 27 Lack of data forced specialists to work with the available data sheets, such as statistics from transport companies, or geographical data from urban planning such as the population density or size of a city. Planners highlighted that the most important issue was the locations of main destination points. “The character of urban planning (…) plays a crucial role in the definition of directions for transportation flows”. 28 Urban structure influenced the particularities of the transport service, such as route networks and schedules. Travel behaviour was then understood as an adaptation to the built environment.
Textbooks for urban and transportation planners and academic publications provided a vast variety of coefficients used for adjustments. There were very precise numbers, such as koefficient neravnomernosti zapolneniya podvijnogo sostava (coefficient of uneven loading of rolling stock) on a particular route during a specific timeframe or koefficient zagruzki (loading factor) per single vehicle. 29 Simultaneously, textbooks provided very general concepts, such as the obshchiy marshrutnyi koefficient (overall route coefficient) 30 or adjustment values for leisure trips. 31 A methodologically similar approach was used in economic calculations for planning purposes. 32 These approaches were based on available but scarce data, and scholars put great effort into extracting the maximum information from the datasets.
The second consequence was diametrically opposed. Specialists highlighted that simplification was actually a single response to the complexities of mobility as a research topic, and that consequently the correlations between different characteristics were less certain. The social structure, territory, population, urban planning, location of places for work and leisure, level of transport system performance, tariff options, and the prosperity of a population of a city are crucial for a very careful scrutiny in the forecast of travel behaviour. The largest cities demonstrate the higher number of trips. However, there is no defined pattern of relationship between territory, population and travel behaviour.
33
Transport of passengers and goods is a part of human livelihood. Consequently, laws of transportation reflect them and are influenced by fundamental patterns of human community. Relations of production and other social and economic connections between people, scientific and technological development, as well as biological factors have a huge impact as well. These extremely complicated underpinnings that sustain transportation are very hard to comprehend. It forces us to deny the fundamental issues and frame transportation as a physical phenomenon.
34
Three main goals of transportation planning
This section presents the three main focuses of public transport operations, namely travel fatigue, service quality, and cost reduction – illustrating how a planned economy actually functioned at the ground level.
Labour productivity was a fundamental economic concept for appraising the effectiveness of urban transportation 35 based on the idea that commuting times should be minimised. In 1967, Stroitelnie Normi i Pravila (Building codes and regulations) limited one-way commuting time to 40 min in cities of more than 250,000 inhabitants. 36
Sophisticated modelling techniques calculated the correlation between economic prosperity and travel time. The concept of transportnaya ustalost’ (transport fatigue) was proposed to calculate the losses resulting from substandard urban transportation. Surveys during the 1970s at Vtoroi Moskovskii Chasovoi Zavod (the Second Moscow Clock Plant) and Moskovskii Shelkovii Kombinat Imeni P. P. Shcherbakova (Moscow Textile Mill named after P. P. Shcherbakov) showed how commuting conditions measured via travel mode, time and comfort influenced daily output. Workers who commuted by foot showed higher productivity. Travelling to work by overcrowded public transport involving numerous modal connections showed strong correlation with lower output. The author argued that 30 min was an “appropriate” travel time for urban environments. 37
The same studies were conducted numerous times to determine the exact mathematical relationships. Workers in Rubсovsk, for instance, who spent 20 min on a one-way commute showed higher productivity (from 4.1 to 7.1 per cent depending on the occupation) compared with workmates who commuted for over an hour. 38 A study in Belarus showed that extending normal one-way commuting time from 40 to 50 min was associated with a 4 per cent drop in productivity. 39 Ultimately, a combination of numerous studies elucidated the relationships between various commuting intervals and workplace productivity. One passenger-hour of “travel fatigue” was estimated to impose costs of between 0.15 and one rouble in the early 1980s. 40 The idea of minimising the need for passengers to interchange along a route was based on the same principle as travel time savings.
The very idea of monetary estimation of travel time was also challenged, and was a topic of discussion in the late 1970s. Urban transportation scholars criticised the analytical uncertainty of such a concept. Others insisted on monetary estimation by citing high-speed transportation – arguing that its benefits could not be properly justified without pricing the resulting travel time savings. 41
However, the initial study highlighted that the relative comfort of extraurban trains (with greater seat availability and lower passenger loadings) was associated with better productivity outcomes despite involving longer travel times than for overcrowded urban transport. 42 This was an empirically oriented critique of the travel time savings concept that was later developed by addressing the influence of service quality on travel fatigue. 43
The second goal concerned quality of service. 44 Similarly to travel time, quality assessment metrics had a clear regulatory statement measured in the relationship between the space inside a vehicle and the number of passengers carried. According to Pravila Organizacii Passajirskih Perevozok na Avtomobil’nom Transporte (Rules on passenger service by automobile transport), the maximum loading had to be less than five passengers per square metre of free cabin floor during peak hours. 45 Manufacturers provided the data on the “appropriate” loading.
The third goal was to minimise costs for operating companies. 46 The transportation research centre under Gosplan 47 sought to elaborate this issue in great depth. 48 Appropriate fleet management and service provision were stated as crucial factors in reducing costs. 49 They stated, for instance, that all urban transportation modes had to be allocated to specific corridors according to passenger volumes.
The literature shows that public transport operations in the USSR were tasked with enhancing labour productivity and ensuring quality of service while simultaneously minimising operating costs. The realisation of these goals suggested the evaluation via statistical accounting rather than direct monitoring.
Context of planned economy
The very idea of measuring service quality by counting passenger numbers received much criticism.
50
Quality is absent from the list of planned numbers (…). The calculation of average distance is uncertain and, therefore, ridership is derived from the number of passengers carried (…) as well as the revenue (…). If these numbers increase with no changes in speed and fleet renovation, then the quality is reduced.
51
Indeed, from the operator's perspective, there was no need for improvement, since it was easier and cheaper to carry more passengers via the existing fleet.
Academic attention to local transport companies revealed numerous barriers to achieving the primary goals:
Capacity of maintenance depots satisfied 70 per cent of needs. Huge deficit of equipment and spare parts. Many free-riders. Old and new vehicles operated on the same route. High-capacity vehicles operated on routes with low loading.
52
Furthermore, these existing problems gradually worsened, while new ones emerged. Fuel and rubber were of low quality. Consequently, technical performance remained outdated for a long time while expenditures even on fundamentals such as engineering research were modest. Coupled with high labour turnover and low staff qualifications, all these factors led to financial losses in urban transportation since the 1970s.
53
Additionally, production facilities lacked the capacity to satisfy the demand for new vehicles. It was no coincidence, therefore, when passengers referred to the Likinsky LiAZ-677
54
urban bus as a skotovoz (cattle truck) due to its unpleasant travelling conditions.
55
Deficits in the transportation sector stemmed from the following factors. Firstly, the USSR's economy was strongly orientated towards military industries, meaning that the civil sector featured outdated means of production and received the residuals from the military. 56
Secondly, competition for resources suggested lobbying efforts. Politicians and industries in the civil sector had to negotiate resource allocation not only with the military but amongst themselves. Moreover, all production targets had to be fulfilled on the basis of the technical-industrial-financial plan. 57 Each entity was assigned many targets. For public transport, the main targets were passenger numbers for trams and trolleybuses, and passenger turnover for bus services. Gosplan sought to balance all demands using the available resources. In attempts to gain more resources and fewer obligations, different strategies, plans and agreements were needed as leverage in the process of negotiations. 58
For instance, regulations required all cities to develop a Kompleksnaya Transportnaya Skhema (Integrated Transportation Scheme, hereafter KTS) that outlined mid-term forecasts for the development of the transportation system. Only a few planning entities, based in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev and Minsk, had the power and trained workforce to develop such strategies. This usually formed part of a so-called generalnyy plan (general plan, hereafter genplan) that was developed in the same manner outside the local context. The genplan was rather an abstract strategy for cities or regions, and local planners had to adjust it to specific conditions. Importantly, responsibility for realising these top-down plans and targets lay with local government.
In the case of Omsk city, a study revealed that the KTS forecast a doubling of the growth in tram ridership, while the fleet would increase by only 10 per cent and the track length by 2 per cent. 59 In the KTS for Novosibirsk city, passenger forecasts were double the actual figures in a nine-year period. 60 After scrutinising forecast numbers and available resources for nine cities across the country, the authors outlined that “such a rapid growth in ridership for electrical public transport (while actual numbers were 2 to 3 per cent per year) and the number of vehicles in a fleet could not be real without a balance between the development of maintenance facilities and network extension”. 61
Apart from resource allocation issues, KTS enabled local governments to convey the impression of responding to the needs of citizens. 62 The development of the KTS had more of a political meaning in bureaucratic circles than an economic, planning or strategic one. Local administrations therefore oversaw KTS, and would not authorise planners’ proposals that did not satisfy the demands of local officials. Political issues and the voluntaristic view of bureaucrats interfered with the process of planning and administration.
Thirdly, at the level of transport companies, the definition of targets was a two-way process. To put it simply, a company developed its own targets, submitted them to Gosplan and then received skorrektirovannyi (adjusted) targets in return. Operators then had to meet the assigned targets by any means. However, in practice, the economy functioned on the basis of so-called pripiski (errors). As such, all ground-level production plans, targets and real-world performance were subject to falsification. Public transport companies typically manipulated various data, such as simply reporting higher numbers of services.
Employees and managers of transport companies received bonus payments for seemingly meeting the planned goals. This problem was understood quite well on each level of the management hierarchy. 63 The solution for urban buses came from digital technology in the mid-1980s. Sensors installed in the road surface provided accurate counts of bus trips per period. 64 In practice, this did not solve the problem of data accuracy. 65 The same errors were also relevant for freight services.
In a series of interviews with employees from different industries in the late 1980s, a mechanic from a freight auto company stated that drivers made 50 tonne-km during a day, whereas their production plan targets were three times higher. To ostensibly meet their mileage targets, drivers advanced the vehicle's odometer reading by spinning its input shaft with a drill, and discarded gasoline if they were unable to sell it illegally in the private sector. This situation was common knowledge. However, planning numbers took priority, and managers did not challenge the process of data falsification. Companies also had to send trucks for scheduled maintenance, despite them having covered less mileage than reported and hence being in good condition. Paradoxically, the trucks were sometimes retuned in worse condition than before; nonetheless, management paid almost the same price for the maintenance as for a new truck. 66
Consequently, pripiski imbalanced almost all layers of the USSR economy. It harmed service provision, introduced errors to planning, and interfered with the process of economy-wide economic plans, thereby distorting the view of the functioning of the system and the setting and realisation of goals. This gap between a production plan and its realisation became a point for critique since the late 1970s.
67
No one calculated the performance of goal indicators. In most cases, forecasts had a very inaccurate calculation. Planning solutions had no connections with goals. The analysis of problems is vague and uncertain. Effects are neglected and costs played the leading role. As a consequence, less effective solutions had a major role, while the most valuable ideas were postponed or even cancelled due to the lack of resources.
68
Analysis (…) showed that operating companies and responsible officials have only 50 per cent of documents that regulate the management and organisation of the transportation service. Moreover, the rapid development of progressive methods (…) revealed (…) weaknesses in the management and contradictions between the approach to service provision and real conditions. Such issues as passenger flow surveys, timetable adjustments, on-route speed settings and operational management are not addressed competently enough.
71
A hierarchical structure of planning faced an unpredicted form of response to the tough economic realities. The practical level showed how workers and employees established their own approach to navigate between the burden of different top-down ordinances and their own visions embedded in the local context. The only way to improve performance within a hierarchical structure of management and knowledge production was to establish bureaucratic control over issues where limited attention was paid to the origins of biases and errors.
“Imaginative” approach to planning and management
Since planners had to work with scarce and partly unreliable data, they constantly requested improvements in this field. Planners were required to deliver KTS and genplan to cities throughout the USSR. This posed a basic contradiction, generally reflected in the literature, namely: How did planners deliver outputs under conditions of questionable data? This is exactly the space where “irrational, intuitive and tradition-oriented” 74 bases were used, which I term here an “imaginative” approach.
This concept emerged unexpectedly during empirical research, and therefore relies primarily on practical expressions rather than theoretical assumptions. At the same time, there is almost no literature that actually focuses on such a view in transportation. Only brief and very general notions are available, for instance “creativeness during the process of analysis and decision-making is inevitable due to the absence of a single criteria of the optimum”. 75 Imagination in planning and management was not a specific discipline; rather, it involved knowledge that was shared orally amongst professionals without any proper explanation in textbooks. 76 Transportation planning was therefore a form of knowledge and practice that functioned under the principle of “learning by doing”.
“When I started my career in planning in the 1960s, some good, well-organised schools of transportation planners already existed (…) They functioned as a synthesis of planning, scientific and educational organisations”. 77 The “imagination” of a planner was a feeling, a creativeness, a specific experience that was transferred from old specialists to younger generations through practice. Naturally, it did not involve the total substitution of mathematical methods, but rather the supplementary practice of compensation.
This connection between calculations and “imaginations” in planning was even organised institutionally, because transport/urban planners and architects were educated at architectural universities, receiving training in various creative disciplines. During discussions, one of my interviewees cited a USSR-educated transport planner: “If you can’t draw your idea, then you can’t explain it”. 78 In other words, while architects should be able to imagine a building prior to its construction, transport planners had to similarly envisage mobility needs and traffic flow before a new factory or residential district was built. Only a few specialists in the entire country had the ability to do so, while others tried to catch up with them 79 .
Simultaneously, the “imaginative” approach was not only a unique gift of nature for only a few, it also had implications at the ground level of service delivery. The “high” level, comprising architectural university alumni, suffered from deficits of data and local knowledge, while the “low” ground level such as transport depots lacked the resources to deliver a decent service. In both cases, an “imaginative” approach involved very practical forms of knowledge that allowed specialists to get the job done despite constraints and limitations.
The case of Ulyanovsk: 1963–1991
The Сentral’nii Komitet Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soyuza (Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) in Moscow initiated the search for a new industrial facility in 1975, with a particular focus on heavy aircraft able to carry road-transported, intercontinental ballistic missiles. After a year of special inspection and fierce competition between lobbyists, 80 a huge agricultural field was chosen on the left bank of the Volga River in Ulyanovsk. The plan suggested an aircraft assembly line, instrument and engine factories, and an institute for aerodynamics research with a combined total of 55,000 employees. An airport with a five-kilometre runway, and a huge residential district for 300,000 inhabitants were planned, with all services located near the industrial facilities. 81 The new district was named Novii Gorod (New Town). The Ministerstvo aviatzionnoy promyshlennosti (Ministry of Aviation Industry) played a major role in financing, managing and constructing the factory, airport and residential district.
The KTS for the city of Ulyanovsk was developed in 1982, and suggested great plans for urban transport development in the 1990s. A new bridge across the Volga River (almost six-kilometres in length) was planned, and construction started in 1985. It was initially proposed that the new crossing would have a rapid tram line on the first level and cars on the second level. Planned tram routes would connect Novii Gorod with the city centre and the old civilian airport via the new bridge. 82 The planned tram would travel underground in the city centre, while a new trolleybus line would connect both parts of the city by the electrification of an old bridge. Construction even began on a new trolleybus depot on the right bank of the river.
Trolleybuses were chosen as the mode of public transport within the new district. In accordance with the Zadanie (task) for the new aviation plant, the Ministry of Aviation Industry funded expansion of the trolleybus depot from 100 to 200 vehicles, purchased the trolleybus fleet and financed an additional 110 km of overhead wires. 83 Initially, local officials decided in 1963 to construct a trolleybus network on the left bank of the Volga River, running through Ulyanovsk city. Work began on the trolleybus depot in 1967, and completion took several years, involving installing windows, covering floors, developing specialised maintenance equipment, etc. 84 The first passengers were carried in 1974 – a gap of eleven years. The local public transport company was subsequently renamed to Tramvaino-Trolleibusnoe Upravlenie (Tram and Trolleybus Operation Company, hereafter TTU).
Textbooks suggested that trolleybuses could achieve higher ridership than diesel buses. 85 However, the new trolleybus line in Ulyanovsk operated on a single route in a neighbourhood with low population density. Trolleybus routes were also constructed to serve several new military factories in the area.
The TTU had a certain level of independence due to the outdated level of technical equipment because they celebrated the ability to maintain not only the vehicles but the equipment by themselves. A boring machine, for instance, was appropriated from a German plant after WWII and (as of 2022) remained in operation in a tram depot. Many depots in the USSR were generally built with manufacturing facilities in order to conduct overhaul maintenance. Consequently, almost all technical problems could be solved at the depot level, at least in the largest cities with well-developed electrified public transport networks. The approach of the planned economy was simple: Manufacturers delivered only vehicles; everything else was the responsibility of the transport company. Moreover, it was common practice to conduct final assembly of new vehicles at local depots. Hence, the operating company had both technical and managerial independence. It was, however, financially dependent on the city administration and ministry.
Urban transportation capacity was scarce, and so plant and factory administrations directly financed additional public transport services. Similarly to mechanical and vehicle manufacturers in Ulyanovsk, the aviation plant signed an agreement with the TTU. The transport company provided additional services to the aviation plant based on the timing of workers’ shift patterns. 86 In exchange for providing these additional transportation services, the management of the trolleybus depot distributed 30 new flats annually amongst employees on a free-of-charge basis. Flats were built in a new residential district and financed by the Ministry of Aviation industry. This is relevant, since accommodation opportunities played a crucial role in the attractiveness of a workplace for every industry in the USSR. Consequently, aside from transportation facilities, the TTU owned three dormitories and a resort on the Volga River. 87
In 1981, extension of the existing network brought trolleybuses to a central part of Novii Gorod, and a few years later trolleybus routes were extended to the first entrances of the plant. Interestingly, this new route connected the city and plant during peak hours, whereas during off-peak hours vehicles only serviced the neighbourhood. Two circular routes were established in the same period. The furthest entrance of the aviation plant was connected to the trolleybus network only in 1989. 88
According to recollections of TTU employees, the routes and timetables were revised numerous times. However, there is no evidence that such changes resulted from pressure imposed by top-down strategic planning initiatives on ground-level decision making. 89 Service improvements struck a balance between the available resources, response from passengers and initiatives from the most active employees. However, there was only a single channel for feedback, called jaloby (complaints), to which the TTU and ispolkom (city hall) were required to respond. Fewer complaints were taken as indicating a better service.
Additionally, TTU management negotiated changes to the timing of plant work-shifts in order to tackle the lack of vehicles during peak hours. Industries had a single need to transport their workforce, while the rest was in the focus of the operating company. In that regard, depots had to satisfy direct claims and immediate obligations, while service improvements based on textbook suggestions received attention according to the residual principle. At the same time, the service had clear resource-dependent shortages, such as insufficient staff, technical facilities or vehicles. 90 In 1990, the system comprised only 52 km of overhead wires and 67 vehicles, 91 almost half what had been planned 15 years earlier.
Numerous workers recall that Novii Gorod experienced huge urban transportation problems during the 1980s. Many residents walked kilometres by foot from the last bus stop to the aviation plant and a construction site. After the first assembly line was built, the management of the aviation plant shifted immediately to the construction of the first aircraft. Consequently, construction of the residential district, plant and first aircraft occurred simultaneously. A number of employees highlighted the transportation problems in the new district in personal communications. One respondent raised the issue of levie (illegal) buses that provided informal transportation services to citizens. 92 This practice was irregular and prohibited, but was a source of additional income for bus drivers from different entities that had vehicles available, such as kolkhoz (collective farms). 93
The evidence shows that the trolleybus service in Ulyanovsk developed very slowly. It took years to start operations for a single route and to establish connections between residential and industrial facilities; and years longer to establish a full service to the aviation plant. The TTU was unable to reach the intended quality of service due to a residual principle in the resource allocation process. Simultaneously, employees maintained their independence in the decision-making process and improved the service by negotiating working shifts with their customers, and managing the fleet, timetable and routes according to their own perspective. However, there was only a single feedback channel, and employees relied primarily on their own views concerning questions of service development. This observation corresponds very closely to the “irrational, intuitive and tradition-oriented” description of an “imaginative” approach.
Conclusion
Specialists in the USSR shared the view that extensive, high-quality data could enable a scientific approach to efficient planning and management. However, persistent calls for such resources received only very modest financial support. Planners therefore maximised the utility of the available data. In line with this, the empirical data show that planning and management did not rely solely on numerical calculations. This shift was an inevitable coping response to political interference and permanent deficits of all essential resources. Well-educated specialists from Moscow and St. Petersburg adopted “imaginative” solutions that more truthfully acknowledged the limits of numerical calculations under prevailing conditions of erroneous and absent data.
Similar issues were evident at the scale of local transportation depots. Transport company employees suffered a lack of resources but were required to deliver planned services in the absence of solid scientific support. In that respect, they were relatively free to define strategies for developing transportation services in accordance with specific local circumstances.
It is also noticeable that the “imaginative” approach was institutionalised in contexts such as educational programmes or the partial independence of depots. Despite perceptions of planned economies as being very strictly regulated, there were some lacunas of self-actualisation, initiative and freedom. It appears that interrelations between high-end planning and public transport workers were rare and perhaps even absent, but the evidence suggests that they developed common coping methods.
The increasing challenges of planning and administration in the USSR forced the high-ranking bureaucracy to eliminate uncertainties through mathematical modelling. This observation raises the question of applicability and the empirical introduction of mathematically based decisions. Intentions were varied, but the main reasons involved the appropriate distribution of resources and control over service provision. To some extent, the call for objective mathematical approaches reveals how bureaucracy found itself in a state of confusion, dealing with a subject it did not know how to control. In that respect, planning entities served bureaucrats’ needs and desires under the label of “science” rather than digging into the specificities of service provision and public transport usage. Transport companies had to satisfy direct claims from the largest industries in the locality, under conditions of pervasive deficits. The needs of passengers did not feature in that perspective.
Nowadays, the role of bureaucracy is even stronger. Communication between holders of specific knowledge on transportation systems is still mediated by various types of officials. Paradoxically, there was greater independence in knowledge production and the freedom to decide and act within the military-oriented, strictly-organised, planned economy compared with the contemporary “free market” response to transportation issues. The “imaginative” approach shows the absence of communication between different levels of knowledge production in the USSR. Hypothetically, this observation is relevant not only for contemporary conditions of transport planning and management in the present-day Russian Federation but for transportation-related knowledge worldwide. Establishing connections between various knowledgeable actors may facilitate alternatives to mainstream discourses.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
This article has benefitted greatly from the feedback of anonymous reviewers and my colleague Mariya Petrova at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography, Leipzig.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This article presents research conducted as part of the CoMoDe project, which received funding from the “Leibniz Competition” research and innovation programme of the Leibniz Association (grant number J86/2019).
