Car congestions will be limited in the urban areas of Sofia and a free public transport will be provided during the days when the prognoses for air pollution are over the air quality limit. This is only a small part of the precautions to reduce air pollution which the Municipality of Sofia will present in few days, according to the announcement made on Facebook by the mayor Yordanka Fandakova.
She has promised to strengthen the control over the vehicle inspection and old cars without catalytic converters which will be banned within the city limits. “ We are suggesting a legislation change which will allow us to put stickers showing an ecological class on the cars in Sofia municipality. Our goal is to create an opportunity for an additional control by the Transport Police” says the mayor Fandakova.
A new early warning system for civil warning will be created. It will warm the citizens when the air pollution is above the air quality limits so precaution could be taken on time. Furthermore a local system for monitoring the air quality will be created as well.
In Sofia an ecological monitoring will be made. It will report on local sources of pollution and it will focus on actions against them. The municipality will start an informative campaign about the damages that heating with solid fuel causes to the air quality. With this campaign the municipality tries to encourage the usage of alternative sources of heating.
The mayor has reminded that recently the municipality has bought electric buses for the public transport and new EV charging stations will supply electric energy for the recharging of electric vehicles.
“We are working on a programme for green policies, in a cooperation, with experts from the Bulgarian academy of science, The technical university and HTMU. In addition to this we expect the construction of the third metro line to save up to 90 000 tons of harmful emissions annually. All the new vehicles in the public transport are obliged to have ecostandard EURO6. New bikeways are being made, as well as buffer parking at the first and the last stop of the metro lines in order to encourage the usage of bicycles. Furthermore we will increase drastically the frequency of the street cleaning. We keep on planting trees and creating new green areas around the busy boulevards and annually we are foresting soil erosion areas outside the urban areas”, says Yordanka Fandakova.
“From 2012 – 2016 on the territory of Sofia municipally 6 844 trees were planted. Besides this in the last 6 years 1041 decarеs of deserted farm lands have been afforested. In 2017 we plan the forestation of new 1200 threes in the city and more than 200 decares of deserted farm lands in the outskirts of the capital” , said the mayor Fandakova.
The programme will enter into force after a co-ordination with the citizens.