Conveners
Comparative Perspectives on Transport in the Post‐Socialist East
- Lela Rekhviashvili (Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography)
Description
Mobilities and immobilities are not the same everywhere. Yet, the research area of mobilities in the post-socialist East took a while to emerge as a field. Despite the meaning and importance of collective modes of transport in that part of the world, public transport has until recently, played but a marginal role in scholarly literature. In recent years, we indeed have witnessed an increasing emergence of in-depth studies inspired by the influence of the mobilities turn in transportation research, and amply building on sociological and ethnographic scholarship (e.g. Shajtanova and Kuznetsov 2014; Vozyanov 2014; Kuklina and Holland 2018; Rekhviashvili and Sgibnev 2018; Weicker and Turdalieva 2021). These contributions have fostered insights into actor constellations, trajectories and practices in particular case cities and regions, and therefore constitute a formidable foundation for further research in the post-socialist East. Comparative studies, however, have remained few, and, moreover, are largely outdated, lack dialogue with theoretical innovations, and remain dominated by economistic and technocratic readings (e.g. Pucher 1999; Gwilliam et al. et al 2000; Gwilliam 2001; Finn 2008). Seminal edited volumes (Burrell and Hörschelmann 2014; Blinkin and Koncheva 2016; Duijzings and Tuvikene 2023) have significantly advanced our understanding of the width and depth of mobilities research in the formerly socialist space at-large, yet more, and decidedly comparative research is needed.
The question remains: How to account for local diversity and regional specificities of transport politics, meanings of local (mobility) history and culture? Should that history be treated as an increasingly vanishing memory, or something that has still the power to shape contemporary and future processes, such as the urgently needed mobility transitions? Are there elements of the past – even if they emerge from otherwise undesirable era in need to be moved away – that could be revived and be used for contemporary inspiration? Attending to continuities – of policy thinking, of public values, of infrastructures – is equally crucial in assessing future processes of moving or not moving towards sustainable mobility systems. Looking back to learn for the future might be of great value.
In the last two decades, flying has become relatively widespread yet unequally distributed in Polish society. Passenger numbers rebounded after the COVID slump and will soon reach record highs. At the same time, flying is increasingly problematized due to the carbon emissions it generates. Resolving the tensions between the growth dynamic and the need to reduce emissions requires knowledge...
Moscow Public Transit Network: an overall description of system's evolution in 1985-2016:
• Peak development of the route network in the 1980s: the maximum number of routes in operation and vehicles assigned to these routes
• Analysis of changes in the Moscow urban transit network in the 1990s. The impact of the socio-economic crisis in the USSR/Russia on the route network
• Car-oriented...
Poland has one of the highest car ownership rates in Europe, with almost 600 cars per 1,000 inhabitants, a figure that has tripled over the past three decades. In parallel, the accessibility of public transport in post-communist Poland has declined, exacerbated by the financial challenges faced by many Polish transport companies (Olejniczak et al., 2019). As a result, Polish society has become...
