site.btaSofia Receives EU Funding to Improve Air Quality Together with Other Municipalities

Sofia Municipality obtained approval for EU funding for the Strategic Integrated Project "Bulgarian Municipalities Working Together to Improve Air Quality" under the EU's LIFE programme for the environment and climate action, Doncho Barbalov, Deputy Sofia Mayor for Finance and Healthcare, wrote in his Facebook profile on Monday.

The concept for the project was submitted in 2022, and the approval came in the middle of September 2023, Barbalov said. Sofia Municipality has set the budget of the project at EUR 5,266,000, including EUR 2,796,000 in funding from the EU and up to EUR 2,470,000 in own resources. The duration of the project is six and a half years.

The lead organization is Sofia Municipality. The other partners are the municipalities of Burgas, Veliko Tarnovo, Montana, Stara Zagora and Ruse and non-governmental organizations.

The LIFE programme requires that an integrated project should involve measures for sustainable urban development towards a low-carbon and/or climate-resilient society, such as a sustainable urban mobility plan. The Sofia Municipality-led integrated project is focused on low-carbon development through sustainable mobility and involves measures for which the municipalities have not raised funding from national operational programmes, Barbalov explained.

In Sofia, the project will support two main activities: drawing up a new traffic management plan and building a smart urban platform.

The smart platform will provide comprehensive, easy-to-find, real-time information about the whole municipality, in Bulgarian and English. It will give details about: the movement of public transport vehicles allowing passengers to plan their trips in terms of time and cost; weather and road conditions; parking spaces, prices and duration; pedestrian areas, with cultural, sport and other facilities within their limits; bikeways, bicycle parking areas, bicycle and scooter sharing systems, electric vehicle rentals and charging stations; travel links from the airport to railway stations and metro stations, and alternative travel options. The platform will allow technological upgrading and constant information updating, Barbalov said.