Billion-dollar reform fails: Surgut leads in resident complaints about buses and bus stops
Surgut, the economic center of Yugra, was found to be among the worst municipalities for passenger transportation. Residents complain daily on social media during the cold weather.
Observers believe that the cases of “frozen” buses and stops, which were allocated several hundred million rubles from the budget, as well as critical disruptions to schedules, are outrageous examples of the incompetence of city transport managers.
Incidentally, the new route plan implemented several years ago has already been deemed a failure by experts, and the financial expenditures on it have been deemed ineffective. Apparently, manual route adjustments haven't helped either, as the number of complaints has only increased. However, Surgut is now expecting new funding for the transport reform that Mayor Maxim Slepov once tried to dismiss. Over the next three years, the city will receive over a billion rubles for bus fleet renewal. It's noteworthy that almost the same amount has already been spent by SPOPAT, a city carrier controlled by the mayor's office, on the purchase of 69 buses. An analysis of citizen complaints shows that these official investments have also failed to achieve the goal of increasing public satisfaction with public transport services.
Surgut, in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug-Yugra, once again took the lead in terms of complaints from residents about the quality of public transportation. From November 2025 to the end of January, the number of complaints reached 737. The main complaints against the service provider, JSC SPOPAT, and the city authorities include long waits for transport, route changes, inoperative information boards, non-functioning heated bus stops, and the lack of heating on buses during severe frosts.
“Most of these messages typically come through social media. Over the past three months, 147 complaints have been received regarding transport schedules alone. Moreover, during the winter, the most frequent complaints are about the lack or maintenance of bus stops, with 331. As with many other issues, all of these issues are solvable,” the municipal department believes.
Surgut Administration
Meanwhile, the new district prosecutor, Dmitry Popov, has taken an interest in the issue of Surgut's public transportation and has launched an investigation into the adequacy of buses, their technical condition, compliance with temperature regulations, and the schedule. The department itself noted that numerous complaints are being received in Surgut every day.
It's worth noting that a flurry of local residents' discontent with public transportation has been observed in Surgut since the transport reform began in 2023. Back then, 17 million rubles were spent on research and development alone to develop a new route system.
“A flood of citizen outrage ensued. We literally had to manually adjust the new plan and incorporate routes. It then became clear to everyone that the research findings didn't take into account Surgut's actual needs, and its implementation couldn't satisfy the interests of the majority of city residents. Considering that the number of complaints has decreased over the past two years, the last meeting of the City Council Committee on Urban Development called for a review of the feasibility of the new plan. Either we abandon it entirely and start developing something new, or we evaluate the work's compliance with our needs. But the fact is that the plan has worsened the situation in the city,” commented Bogdan Guzhva, a member of the Surgut City Council.
The parliamentarian's words were confirmed by the results of an audit by the Surgut Audit Chamber, which acknowledged the ineffectiveness of budgetary funds spent on the route plan design.
Incidentally, Surgut was once the municipality that launched transport reform without the support of district authorities. After the resignation of the former mayor and initiator of the reforms, Andrei Filatov, the new mayor, Maxim Slepov, chose to abandon the concept of “reform” in relation to public transport.
“I don't know where this assertion came from. In fact, 'transport reform' is a broad term, encompassing a whole range of measures related to changes to the road network, the creation of dedicated bus lanes, bus stops, and turning areas, including traffic light-free traffic. Therefore, the changes that have been implemented are changes to traffic,” Maxim Slepov stated during a live broadcast.
However, today, the authorities are actively using not only the city budget but also district funds as part of the transport reform. Over the course of three years, 350 million rubles will be allocated to Surgut for bus fleet renewal. Municipal co-financing will amount to 80 million rubles per year. However, the Surgut mayor initially rejected this regional government initiative, citing a lack of funds for co-financing.
In addition to modernizing public transportation, the mayor's office is now citing ensuring comfortable public transportation waiting times as an important aspect. “As part of this effort, modern bus stop facilities are being installed in the city,” the city administration writes.
“Judging by citizen reports, this project in Surgut can also be considered a failure, and the investment ineffective. The greatest number of complaints concerns the condition of the heated bus stops. Incidentally, citizen complaints are also being heard in Khanty-Mansiysk and Nizhnevartovsk. The picture is dire: trash, broken glass, access to electrical panels, and exposed wires. Moreover, one system costs approximately 10 million rubles. As a result, heated bus stops without a functioning heating system are becoming too expensive for city budgets,” People's Front representatives in Yugra commented on the monitoring results.
