Salzburg AG will outsource city transport
For a long time there have been considerations to separate the trolleybus from Salzburg AG. Now you also know how to do it. In this new subsidiary, an advisory board should be able to make decisions, says Salzburg Mayor Harald Preuner (ÖVP): “The novelty is that the new Verkehrs-GesmbH will have a transport advisory board installed. And with this advisory board, we can also award contracts in-house without having to put them out to tender. This means that we can intervene directly as a politician in future traffic events if we are responsible for the tasks.”
City government takes a positive to critical view of spin-off
Establishing a separate subsidiary has always been the SPÖ’s suggestion, emphasizes Red traffic spokesman Tarik Mete. One is therefore satisfied, but “not only bureaucracy must remain, but one must also be able to implement this right to have a say,” says Tarik Mete.
Alongside the ÖVP and the SPÖ, the Greens are the third party represented in the Salzburg city government. The Greens are more critical of the spin-off of the trolleybus into a separate company, emphasizes Ingeborg Haller, the Greens’ club chairwoman: “It remains to be seen whether the spin-off will really be the best thing. The ÖVP will have to admit that we have to put money into public transport.”
ÖVP, SPÖ and Greens: Public transport must be improved
Where all parties agree, public transport in the city of Salzburg should be improved. “The fact is that we have a massive problem with public transport in the city of Salzburg. We have a trolleybus cycle that is beyond good and evil,” says Ingeborg Haller. The SPÖ sees it similarly, it misses an overall strategy for public transport, according to Tarik Mete: “Not only can we put more money into this new transport subsidiary, at the end of the day there must be better travel times, frequencies and connections from peripheral communities.”
Harald Preuner asserts that with the outsourcing, he will be able to control public transport better again: “The traffic planning for public transport must now go back to the city. Then we will finally have the opportunity again to intervene in the way we think is right.”
Outsourcing does not make public transport cheaper
Incidentally, no one believes that the O-Bus will suddenly do well when it is taken over by its own company, and that is not the aim of the spin-off. For this reason, too, the annual public subsidy of almost ten million euros should be received.