Romania electrifies public transport helped by Swiss

Electric vehicles are arriving in Romania helped along with funding through the Swiss government. Cluj, the country’s second biggest city, took delivery of 10 electric buses by Solaris and got more waiting.

Cluj-Napoca has entered the first ten electric buses into service already and awaits another 30 later this year. It appears the city has topped up their existing order that back in 2017 totalled 30 electric buses reportedly.

The Solaris buses were funded through a programme by the Swiss government, which is worth some 27 million lei (about 5.8 million euros). Cluj-Napoca hopes that, by 2025, the city’s whole public transport fleet will be environmentally friendly.

Also the Romanian town of Suceava has announced plans to invest in zero emission public transport. A tender for the supply of 30 large and 15 electric minibuses is to start on July, 5 this year. Funding comes through the same Swiss programme it appears. A total of 4.7 million lei (1 million euros) has been allotted for this purchase.

Only the capital of Romania seems to be lacking behind or is trying other measures. Bucharest is one of the few cities where Uber has launched their UberGreen service so that customers may hail an electric taxi to pick them up (we reported).

Overall Romania must make some more efforts in cleaning up the air as it was among the countries that are being taken to court by the EU over failing to comply with emission standards.

romania-insider.com (Cluj-Napoca), romania-insider.com (Suceava)