Eastern Europe - Eastern Europe (Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Romania, Czech Republic, Moldova, Hungary and Slovakia) is significant in terms of the bus industry because of the number of buses on the roads, said Anna Ozdelen, Principal Consultant at Consul People, speaking at Busworld Turkey last month. The top three countries are Russia (>400,00 units), Ukraine (>225,000 units) and Poland (>120,000 units), which collectively account for over 80% of buses on the road. If Turkey was included it would be above Poland with over 200,000 unit, stated Ozdelen.

The trends in the Eastern European region currently are that passenger car density has been increasing but so has public transportation demand and this remains quite high, said Ozdelen. “The ridership or number of journeys per bus is also higher compared with other regions like Western Europe. Another trend in Eastern Europe is the bus fleet has been aging. So, for example in Russia, 45% of buses are more than 15 years old and there is an effort to add new buses to the fleet with zero emission solutions and this has been driving e-mobility.”