Intercity Transportation

In the few months I have been here, I have discovered that the decentralized transportation works.
Every local community has drivers’ who have figured out the needs of their communities. Entry to meet this demand starts with ‘wild taxi’s’. These are unlicensed driver’s with personal cars who ‘hang’ around the main street, often calling out the names of the town they are headed and will drive passengers to their destination in the neighboring villages and towns at the same rate as the fixed bus rate and charge by the passenger. So if you are alone, they may stop and pick up 3 other passengers. In big cities they tend to prey on tourists and charge inflated rates, but in the smaller towns where there are no tourists, like my site, they are okay. The louder they yell for passengers, the more careful a tourist needs to be!
The next step up is the licensed taxi driver, followed by the licensed combi driver. The combi, small minibus’ holding about 6-8 people to larger ones with a capacity of 21-30 people is most efficient. They operate like buses with a fixed schedule based on their knowledge of the needs of their community. For example, in my town the people who go to Skopje on a regular are usually going to shop for the day, maybe for a job related meeting and return at night, as well as students who live in Skopje and return home for the weekends. The journey is not short – 2 plus hours, so the two combi driver’s leave every weekday morning around 5 am and return in the evening, leaving around 4pm. Their mission is to transport people, so they will take people who may not want to all the way to the final destination and drop them along the way. If they have space they will pick up passengers along the way to their final destination.
The combi I took midweek was leaving after a holiday and packed with students. That morning, we doubled up and took on more passengers than there were seats! On the return home there were only 3 of us and I observed he stopped and picked up and dropped passengers along the way, meeting the need of the community in a way a centralized bus service would not be able to administer! So this weekend, when I went to Skopje for Saturday evening, I was able to visit and have lunch in Gostivar (a city about an hour from Skopje and in the same direction as my town) and still return on ‘my combi’ back to Brod, as he made a slight detour from the main highway to pick me up. Truly I feel the priority of the system is to transport people from place to place. If you combine these combi’s with the centralized inter-city bus service, the flexibility gained makes it a very efficient system. It also provides a space for entrepreneurial activity for a public service.
The starting point of this system - the ‘wild taxis’ presents a challenge – as it takes away from the efficiency of the system, and is often exploitative of tourists and newcomers to the community. The centralized system is also not a single bus company and thus you can only buy tickets in the last hour prior to the bus arrival to the station, from which you are departing. This is a new mindset for travelers from countries such as America where, we make plans and reservations way ahead of time, constrained as we are with time commitments. The quality of the intercity buses, combi’s and taxi’s is also a bit of a problem, ranging from modern to ancient equipment, so often the published schedules reflect the timings of those companies with little newer equipment.
As volunteers, we see this side of equation simply as we are given no choice – we are not allowed to drive and don’t have enough money to rent a car for our travels! I have experienced the value of this rule in our slower paced environment.