In three villages of Maloryta District, a bus will run only after a call to a dispatcher

A new scheme for suburban transport is being tested in Maloryta District, Brest Region: buses enter sparsely populated villages only on passengers' advance requests. The pilot project of the Ministry of Transport and Communications started on 29 September and will run until 31 December 2026.

To travel, a resident must call a dispatcher at a single number the day before the trip and leave a request for a specific date. Without a call, the bus does not go to the village; whether a trip happens depends on the request, not on the timetable.

The district has 22000 residents, more than half of them, 12600, in the district centre itself. The rest, that is, villagers, will have to plan their trips around a call the day before.

Three suburban routes with the lowest passenger traffic were chosen for the start: No. 354 "Maloryta — Dobrasava", No. 367 "Maloryta — Perevyss via Zelenitsa" and No. 342 "Maloryta — Otyaty".

According to Aliaksei Zhohal, director of the communal transport unitary enterprise Brestgortrans, the key principle of the scheme is flexible response to real demand: if there are no requests, the transport runs on a shortened main route. The authorities assure that the bus will come even for a single passenger.

The Maloryta district executive committee said that before the launch it carried out information work: it explained the rules to village heads and village councils, put up notices at bus stops and published announcements in the district newspaper "Halas chasu".

According to officials, since 1 October the total mileage of the buses has been cut by more than 200 kilometres. The savings come from trips that are not run when there are no requests.

Andrei Hladki, head of the department of road and urban passenger transport at the Ministry of Transport, said that if the project in Brest Region is judged successful, "transport on demand" could be introduced across all of Belarus from 2027. Officials plan to scale the system up.

On social media the experiment was met with scepticism: people ask what elderly people with poor phone service should do and what to do in emergencies. There is still no answer to how those without a phone can leave a request, even though whether the scheme reaches the other regions in 2027 depends on exactly this.