site.btaAmphibious Bus to Offer Passenger Transport between Romania’s Calarasi and Bulgaria’s Silistra

An amphibious bus will be transporting passengers across the Danube between Romania’s Calarasi and Bulgaria’s Silistra, said Bogdan Mușat, head of the Joint Secretariat of the Interreg Romania-Bulgaria Programme in Calarasi. He was speaking at a cross-border conference in Bucharest on Wednesday within the "Europe in the Balkans: А Common Future" project of BTA.

The 35 seater called Frog Bus was purchased by the regional council of Calarasi from Hungary for some EUR 900,000 within a project under the Interreg V-A Romania-Bulgaria Programme. According to information in Romanian media, such amphibious buses have been used as a tourist attraction in Hungary since 2009; they have been used in Portugal as well. Frog Bus was successfully tested in November 2023.

At Wednesday’s conference, Mușat presented the results of two joint projects under the Interreg V-A Romania-Bulgaria Programme for improving the safety of navigation along the Danube in the Calarasi-Silistra cross-border area and for better connectivity of the Ruse-Giurgiu Euroregion with Pan-European Corridor VII.

The first project saw the purchase of the amphibious bus by the Romanian side and of an electric catamaran by the Bulgarian side. Eleven kilometers of waterways have been built and improved, including through the installation of beacons in the 5-km section of the Danube’s Borcha sleeve, new river stations in Calarasi and Silistra, and contemporary areas for recreation and entertainment along the river.

The second project, aimed at developing the Ruse-Giurgiu Euroregion, saw the improvement of 8 km of waterways and the rehabilitation of the Ruse passenger terminal’s quay. In the Romanian section, a quay has been built and the area along the river has been adapted for recreation and entertainment.