President Shavkat Mirziyoyev instructed the purchase of 1,000 additional buses for Tashkent in 2025, minister of transport Ilhom Mahkamov said in an interview with Uzbekistan 24 TV channel on 11 January.

This will be the second major addition for the city bus fleet in decades, after 1,000 buses were purchased from China in 2023, including 200 articulated (two-section) buses and 300 electric buses.

In October 2023, Tashkent’s city administration signed an agreement with China’s BYD to procure 2,000 K9UD eBus electric buses. The first buses were expected to be supplied in 2024, but this has not been implemented yet. There were also reports about possible establishment of electric bus assembly operations in the country.

Ilhom Mahkamov.Ilhom Mahkamov.

By the end of the year, 675 new self-service terminals will be installed at bus stops in Tashkent, enabling passengers to purchase single-use paper tickets with QR codes, the minister added. From 1 January, payment for tickets in cash was prohibited in the capital city buses.

Currently, there are 5,100 self-service terminals, including 769 located at bus stops (the total number of bus stops is 2,644).

buses, ilhom mahkamov, ministry of transport, tashkent

According to the minister, after cash payments were banned in buses, the daily passenger count rose by 43.5% in the first 10 days of January compared to the same period in 2024, from 871,000 to 1.19 million passengers. Revenue increased by 36%, from 8.5 billion to 11.5 billion soums, or from $658,721 to $891,211.

Efforts to eliminate cash payments had been undertaken for years, so this is the major step for the country’s main city. One major problem was hiding part of income by drivers. Trying to earn more and complete the so-called “daily cash plan”, drivers violated schedules and traffic rules, competing with other drivers and bus routes.

As of the end of 2024, Tashkent’s bus fleet had 1,901 vehicles, a 28% increase compared to 2022 (1,485 buses, part of which were outdated). Additionally, average wait times at bus stops halved over the past two years, from 22 to 10−12 minutes.

Ilhom Mahkamov also said a new document was in being prepared for development of public transport in Tashkent.