The vice-mayor of Yekaterinburg cited the absence of conductors as one of the reasons for hooliganism on buses.

      One of the reasons for the mischief caused by minors in the salons of buses and trams is the absence of conductors. This opinion was expressed in a conversation with the portal 66.RU by the deputy head of Yekaterinburg, Alexander Tolkachev, who oversees the work of public transport in Yekaterinburg.

      Since about last year, the Ural capital has literally been swept by a wave of teenage hooliganism directed at urban public transport. Teenagers spray paint in the faces of passengers who make remarks to them, break windows, and simply block traffic, Tolkachev reported.

      In early June, one of these minors, showing off for the public, fell out of the tram window while it was moving. Just the night before, on May 20-21, a group of young guys clashed with an elderly bus driver who was heading to the depot and, for this reason, demanded that they leave the salon. The man had to defend himself with a knife against fists and a stun gun, resulting in one of the teenagers being taken away by ambulance with injuries.

      “At least because of them, we need conductors today. Even when the conductor is an elderly woman, it changes the situation,” believes Alexander Tolkachev. “Teenagers have run amok precisely because there are no adults, no one to shout at them. And the ‘I’m a mother’ types will still say that everyone is to blame except for her child,” he told 66.RU.

      It should be noted that the elimination of conductors was one of the goals of the transport reform in Yekaterinburg, initially overseen by Tolkachev's predecessor, Vice Mayor Alexey Bubnov. In November 2025, the media reported that more than a hundred “conductors” (this is how the word “conductor” is translated from English) were laid off in “Gortrans.”