Podnik

Federation of transport cooperatives of the Republic of Fluid

The size of the fleet

The size of the fleet allows every town and village to cover failures within eight minutes, absorb the inspection cycle and meet the peaks. They also exist because no resident has a private car as an alternative.

The arithmetic

18,592 vehicles serve 18,399,000 residents. That is one public vehicle for every 990 people. A country of the same size with private cars in it would hold seven or eight million of them, and would still require a public fleet in addition.

Cars here sit above the resource intensity threshold. Communes, federations and public establishments hold them, and residents book them by rotation or by lot. No resident is allocated a car. Lindoma holds fewer cars than any other town in the country.

A missed vehicle has no substitute. Where private cars are common, a failed bus inconveniences those who could drive and strands those who could not. In the Republic a failure strands every passenger.

Seven reasons

  1. Waiting time and social use

    Residents ride to parks, parties, restaurants, gatherings and one another's homes, and a service that keeps them waiting shrinks the distance anyone will travel for company. A gap of ten minutes leaves arrangements intact, and an hour with nothing running takes the evening from everyone who planned around it. A passenger may remain aboard for a second circuit, and the social commitments provide for that.

  2. A failure has to be covered in minutes

    A vehicle reporting a fault is taken off the route and a relief vehicle takes the next departure. The target is eight minutes in the towns and twenty on the sub-regional routes.

    Holding to that target requires vehicles standing ready with a driver booked on.

  3. Repair without time pressure

    Once the swap is done, the faulty vehicle goes to the workshop and stays there until it is fully repaired. Nothing about the timetable presses on the mechanic, and no vehicle returns to service after an incomplete repair.

    This is why the expected lives in the catalogue are as long as they are. A tram reaches thirty-five years because it never runs in a damaged state.

  4. The inspection cycle takes vehicles out constantly

    Every vehicle in the register is off the road on some schedule: four hours every 10,000 km, two days every 60,000, five days a year, and nine to sixteen weeks at the half-life rebuild. Nationwide, at any hour of any day, about 1,730 vehicles are being inspected and another 1,240 are at a factory.

  5. The peaks are short

    School weeks, market days, the harvest movements out of the grain basin and the Lindoma port shift require more vehicles to be suddenly released for a few hours. The alternative to holding them is refusing the journeys.

  6. Special duties draw on the same pool

    Escort and support vehicles for Exceptional Transports, engineering trains, the evacuation reserve held against flood on the eastern marshes, and the coaches held for the annual assembly movements contribute to the count.

  7. Fleets are distributed evenly, so the total rises

    A rural commune keeps more vehicles for each resident than a city does, because a single coach covering four villages must still be replaced within twenty minutes when it fails. Spreading the fleet evenly across twenty sub-regions costs more vehicles than keeping it in one place would.

The margin

Counted on a weekday in March, at the 08:00 peak.

Mode In service at the peak Held in total Margin
Trams 1,510 2,168 44 %
Buses 6,420 9,750 52 %
Coaches 1,380 2,208 60 %
Trains 2,190 3,310 51 %
Metro 468 624 33 %
Ferries 108 176 63 %
Pods 324 356 10 %
All modes 12,400 18,592 50 %

Coaches have the widest margin because a rural route has no second vehicle within reach. Pods have the narrowest because their inspection takes 90 minutes and the depot is at the end of the lane.

The 6,192

Where the 6,192 are Vehicles Typical duration
Depot inspection 1,730 4 hours to 5 days
Standing relief, driver booked on 1,480 The shift
Factory rebuild and heavy repair 1,240 9 to 16 weeks
Seasonal and peak-only allocation 980 Weeks in the year
Escort, engineering and evacuation reserve 560 As called
Driver training and instruction 202 Continuous

Figures are the mean across 2025. The daily record is published with the position feed.

Materials

The Bloc exchange settles in goods, labour, technique and knowledge, recorded in physical units through a single external account. Steel sections, aluminium, copper for motor windings and battery cells arrive on that account, and they arrive in the quantities the account provides.

The binding limit is the ecological limit. The availability of materials does not raise the emissions and materials limits a commune adopts for any plan period. A fleet proposal breaching any of the limits is a proposal the commune cannot lawfully adopt. Every vehicle in the catalogue contains its build account for that reason.

Ample material supply results in longer service life. A factory with enough steel can build more units that last longer and have a heavier floor frame, a thicker floor panel and a bolted roof panel that can be replaced on its own.

From 2027

The federation assembly decided in March 2026 to open new-build export. Until now a city outside the Republic could buy vehicles the Republic had finished with, which are listed on the surplus pages and depend on what happens to be coming out of service. The factories have the materials and the capacity to build new vehicles to order, and the assembly has decided they should.

The intended buyer is a city that cannot build its own fleet. Modern low-floor vehicles are sold at prices that place them beyond the means of most city operators, and the cheap alternative is usually a vehicle that only the original factory can repair. A city in that position buys twice: once for the vehicle and again for every part, on terms the seller sets.

Podnik quotes the cost of the work and the materials and adds nothing to it. Patents are prohibited here, so no licence fee is charged. The drawings, the parts list and the list of moulds and tools go with the vehicle in every case.

The programme

Model Type Length Capacity Orders from
TAV B12 Battery town bus 11.95 m 98 2027
TOR B3 Battery minibus, step-free 7.20 m 34 2027
MND F2 Battery lagoon ferry 22.0 m 104 2027
TAV B14 Narrow-body battery bus 10.50 m 76 2028
FER T6 Three-section low-floor tram 18.90 m 142 2028
SOL C7 Battery coach, backup generator 12.00 m 53 2029
LIN P3 Articulated pod bus 6.80 m 28 2030

Those models are in the first programme. The assembly reviews the list every year and will add to it as capacity allows.

Terms

  • Repairable by the buyer

    Every model in the programme was designed to be repaired in a city depot with ordinary tools, with bolted roof panels, door modules common across the range, and a traction package that comes out on four bolts.

  • Building further batches

    A buyer taking the drawings may build the next batch in their own factory and owes the federation nothing for doing so.

  • Parts at the cost of making them

    Ten years guaranteed from delivery. After that the drawings remain and any workshop can make parts from them.

  • The two conditions

    The buyer must run the vehicles in public service and not resell them to a state the Republic has found life-limiting.

A note on timing

Export comes after the Republic's own renewal. The programme uses the capacity left after the domestic orders have been placed, which is why the dates above run from 2027 to 2030 and why quantities in the first years will be modest.