Mykolaiv needs another ₴74 million to provide free travel on trams and trolleybuses

The city council has calculated that free travel on trams and trolleybuses will cost about 74 million hryvnias a year.

These calculations were made at a meeting of the planning and budgeting committee of the city council, NikVesti reports.

Yurii Smetana, director of the municipal enterprise «Mykolaivelektrotrans», said that the introduction of free travel on trams and trolleybuses would mean full compensation from the city budget for all expenses «Mykolaivelektrotrans».

According to him, in 2026, the company's total expenses for the maintenance of electric transport will amount to 798 million hryvnias. Currently, the company covers part of these costs from its own revenues, primarily from ticket sales.

At the same time, he explained that free travel would mean a loss of revenue from ticket sales, which the company would have to compensate from the city budget. We are talking about about 74 million hryvnias a year.

«In fact, we need to add 74 million hryvnias to compensate for what the company receives from ticket sales. We are keeping this figure in mind and will look at it when considering the budget,» said Fedir Panchenko, chairman of the budget committee.

It should be reminded that 189.5 million hryvnias is proposed to be allocated to compensate for the fares for privileged categories of people using Mykolaiv's public transport in 2026.

Free travel

As you know, back in 2021, Mykolaiv proposed to make public electric transport free of charge. At the time, the head of the city council's budget committee, Fedir Panchenko, said that the city already allocates funds from the budget every year for the municipal enterprise «Mykolaivelectrotrans», and the company earns only about 10% of the need from ticket sales.

In 2018, Mykolaiv politician Oleksandr Sadykov, who was a member of the executive committee at the time, also proposed to abolish fares for public transport in the city.

As a reminder, free public transport in Kharkiv, which was introduced in May 2022, is planned to remain in place after the war ends. This was stated by Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov in an interview with «Ukrainska Pravda».

In 2025, the city council returned to this issue again. The deputy is Tetiana Dombrovska. At a meeting of the session on 31 October, she proposed to make public transport free for all city residents. Director of the municipal enterprise «Mykolaivpastrans» Dmytro Teslenko replied that this could only be implemented if the company was reimbursed in full and in a timely manner from the city budget.