Transport reform in St. Petersburg in the context of a smart city development strategy

. The paper evaluates the results of the transport reform in St. Petersburg. It has been established that the current trends in the development of the urban economy in the modern world are being implemented in line with a smart city development strategy, and St. Petersburg is no exception in this regard. It was revealed that the main emphasis in planning the transport reform in St. Petersburg was placed on the systemic nature of its implementation. With this in mind, the authors developed and tested a comprehensive model for evaluating the results of the reform, appealing to the methodology of strategic analysis, taking into account information from open sources. The proposed model was tested on the basis of expert assessments and visualized using heat map tools. As a result, the most significant difficulties faced by the city administration during the implementation of the transport reform were identified, and the need for continuous monitoring (including using sociological survey data) of the model parameters to assess the dynamics of public transport reform was argued. The materials of the paper were tested during a series of round tables held by the St. Petersburg State University in 2022, which were devoted to the strategy of smart city development.


Introduction
Efficient public transport in the city is one of the key elements of a comfortable urban environment. The wide opportunities that scientific and technological progress gives to urban public transport are associated with the need to solve numerous problems with the use of modern technologies. At the same time, the problems of developing smart and sustainable transport in the context of the concept of a smart city occupy a special place in current academic discussions. The concept of sustainable transport was reflected in academic studies in the last quarter of the 20 th century. Litman and Burwell distinguish between its narrow and broad definitions. The first approach is implemented within the framework of individual technological projects. A broader definition is reflected in comprehensive solutions, such as the implementation of institutional reforms [1]. Banister establishes a relationship between sustainable urban development and sustainable transport: in his opinion, innovation in transport must be accompanied by institutional changes [2]. Black highlights the hallmarks of sustainable transport: using renewable fuels, minimizing emissions, reducing deaths, injuries and eliminating congestion [3]. Urban planning as applied to sustainable transport is discussed in Schiller et al. [4]. Holden et al. propose a model for identifying the degree of sustainability of a transport system [5].
The concept of smart transport appeared later, in the 21 st century, in line with the processes of digitalization, the concept of which, in the context of the sustainable development paradigm, formed the theoretical basis of academic ideas about a smart city. From these positions, the intelligent transport system is an integral part of a smart city concept. Benevolo et al. refer the definition of smart in the transport sector to new propulsion systems, vehicle controls (primarily intelligent transport systems), and new business models [6]. Woods et al. suggest that in smart cities, smart transport management contains a set of schemes, projects and administrative decisions [7].
Chen and Silva [8] emphasize that recent developments in smart transport technologies, policies and infrastructure are driven by the emergence of smart city paradigms. Speaking about the nature of smart transport, Docherty et al. believe that technology and management are designed to contribute to the development of smart transport [9]. Kuo et al. [10] note that public transport faces challenges in maintaining its services due to declining government funding. The work of Meersman et al. [11] touches upon the issues of pricing policy in terms of planning road infrastructure to increase the competitiveness of agglomerations.
Refracting the discourse of academic discussion to the issues of Russian urban reforms, one should pay attention to the work of Bolgova et al., who systematize the characteristics of smart transport [12]. Polyakov links high-quality socio-economic clustering with the development of smart cities, one of which is transport provision [13]. Tokunova and Rajczyk [14] identify transport infrastructure problems hindering the development of St. Petersburg. Berezinets and Sokolova consider the features of transport policy in Russian cities in relation to socio-economic processes [15]. The role of public administration, in particular, state strategic management, in the implementation of the goals of improving the quality of the environment in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, is given attention in the publication by Zhigalov and Pakhomova [17].
Thus, the issues of the development of urban transport, including in the application to St. Petersburg, are comprehensively reflected in the academic research. However, the authors often consider the problem of reforming the transport system somewhat fragmentary. From the authors' point of view, the concept of a smart city can contribute to overcoming this gap, which, in particular, allows one to assess the reform in St. Petersburg in a strategic context, taking into account political, economic, socio-cultural and technological parameters. In the materials and methods section, the authors will consider the key features of the transport reform, as well as will characterize the proposed model for assessing its results. The following is an assessment of the results of the reform achieved in the first year of its implementation. The authors conclude by discussing the contribution of this study and summarizing its main findings.

Materials and methods
The purpose of this study is to develop and test a pilot model for evaluating the results of the public transport reform in St. Petersburg in the context of a smart city development strategy. The authors will disclose information about the reform and the proposed assessment methodology in more detail.

Basic information about the transport reform in St. Petersburg
The transport reform began to be implemented in St. Petersburg in 2022, and, despite a rather short time period, certain results have already been achieved, the assessment of which requires regular monitoring. It should be noted that the reform is successive to the Strategy for the socio-economic development of the city until 2035, which contains key indicators in the field of transport provision (Table 1). Currently, the strategic goals for the development of urban transport, according to the city administration, have been achieved by 40-50% [18]. In this regard, the main goal of the transport reform is the transition to a new model of transport service with a single standard for the quality of transport services. The reform includes three stages, which are shown in Figure 1. The main benefit of the reform for citizens is the increase in the comprehensive safety of public transport. In particular, this is expressed in the abandonment of commercial routes and is accompanied by the purchase of new fleet. Since the beginning of the year, more than 3,000 new buses have been purchased in St. Petersburg [20].
The reform has important financial benefits. For citizens, this is the full implementation of social benefits and the introduction of transfer tariffs. It is important for the city that all proceeds from passenger traffic go to the regional budget. The city enters into gross contracts with carriers -a model for organizing passenger transportation, in which carriers transfer all revenue collected from passengers to the city budget, and the city administration pays for trips on routes. During the implementation of the transport reform since April 2022, the budget of St. Petersburg, according to the Department of Ticket Sales of the St.
Petersburg State Institution "Organizer of Transportation", received 3,087 million rubles (Department of Ticket Sales of the St. Petersburg State Institution "Organizer of Transportation").

Model for assessing the results of the transport reform in St. Petersburg
The assessment of the analyzed reform's results is an evaluation of a comprehensive system, in the structure of which it is advisable to single out a number of quantitative and qualitative parameters in the context of a smart city development strategy. According to the authors, for this it is appropriate to adapt the methodology of PEST-analysis, which, firstly, refers to strategizing tools and, secondly, provides for an assessment of the technological component, which is considered in conjunction with political, economic and sociocultural parameters, enabling at the same time to take into account the environmental aspects of the transport reform. It is also possible, in the authors' opinion, to use an expert assessment on a scale (from 1 to 5), which in the future will allow adapting the model for sociological surveys using the Likert scale. Thus, the authors have developed the following assessment model, which includes four blocks of parameters (Table 2).

Results
An expert group created at the St Petersburg University rated the implementation of the transport reform at 62 points out of 80 possible. To enhance the visualization, a heat map was used, which allows presenting a characteristic of the performance level of a particular parameter in color mode (red is the most negative moment, green is, on the contrary, positive). In our case, when forming the integral assessment, the authors tend to the yellow, averaged level (Table 3). An approbation of the proposed model for evaluating the results of the reform enabled to identify the most significant problems in this area, which include the following: 1) The peculiarity of the perception of the reform by the population lies in the fact that the reform is assessed as a whole, some shortcomings or failures in the development of individual links are not highlighted. Thus, failure will be assessed comprehensively.
2) The core structure of the transport network in St. Petersburg is the subway, but its development is largely determined at the federal level, and the city budget in this regard has very limited resources.
3) There is a certain "skew" towards the bus fleet (in fact, the tram and trolley bus remained on the sidelines -the implementation of these projects is even longer in time). At the same time, the deadlines for the delivery of buses are violated. 4) Digitalization creates some difficulties at the initial stage (in some places it is impossible to pay for travel in cash). 5) At this stage, not the most successful scheme of multi-level tickets (60 and 90 minutes) has been introduced, according to which the first mode of transport should be the metro, the pedestrian access to which is available for an insufficiently high percentage of the urban population.

Discussion
The results of the study contribute to the development of a smart city concept by offering a toolkit for assessing transport reforms. Unlike the studies by Bolgova et al. [12] and Berezinets and Sokolova [15], the assessment of the development results of the city's transport infrastructure is presented not in relation to stakeholders, but in the most important areas of its strategic development -political, economic, sociocultural and technological. In turn, the proposed and adapted PEST-analysis methodology enables to take into account technological innovations in the context of the conceptual ideas of a smart city, which corresponds to the current academic discussion, integrating its various academic perspectives.

Conclusion
The study of the transport reform in St. Petersburg in the context of the strategic objectives of the development of a smart city enabled to develop a model for assessing the results achieved in this area. The results of the study were reported at a number of round tables organized by the St. Petersburg University in 2022, which focused on the problems of reforming the urban economy. An approbation of the proposed model showed that the city is faced with natural difficulties. In many ways, the implementation of such comprehensive tasks as the transport reform is not a momentary process, but a long-term procedure that must be improved over a number of years. The results of the study are of practical importance for specialists involved in the development and implementation of the socio-economic policy of the city. Monitoring procedures should be regularly reviewed after a certain time, which will identify trends that require attention when updating the city's development strategy. The proposed model for evaluating the results of the transport reform requires further research, which should be accompanied by sociological surveys of residents and guests of the city. The scaling of the results will be facilitated by a convenient and easy-to-understand methodology, which, taking into account the five-point scoring system, is easy to adapt to the Likert scale.