On September 9, 2010, Bucharest City Hall (PMB) organised the 6th CAPRICE workshop (CAPital Regions Integrating Collective transport for increased energy Efficiency). Through a succession of workshops, CAPRICE partners can exchange best practices on how to increase energy efficiency in public transport. They aim at developing and defining joint strategies for the implementation of an integrated and sustainable management in the field of public transport. On this occasion, Ion Dedu, head of the Directorate for Transport within PMB underlined the need to set up a public transport authority in Bucharest.
“Bucharest needs to have a public transport authority based on the models in Paris or Berlin, which have been successfully working for many years, serving millions of passengers”, said Ion Dedu. He announced that a decision regarding the action that needs to be taken in order to set up a public transport autho-rity will be made during the last conference, which will be held in March 2011 in Paris. VBB Berlin-Brandenburg representative Hans Werner Franz said that the creation of a public transport authority is a requirement imposed by EU directives and that, in order to meet this requirements, Bucharest needs a joint political decision, at local and national level. According to the German official, the transport authority which he represents has a Board of Directors made up of four members from Berlin, four from Brandenburg and one representative in every city and region covered by VBB Berlin-Brandenburg. “They control our budget and every year a report is elaborated in order to justify all the money that is spent and the document is made public”, explained Hans Werner Franz.
Bucharest City Hall has been partner in the CAPRICE project since September 2009. This European project has been extended over a period of three years and it will end in 2011. CAPRICE reunites five partners from all over Europe (VBB – Berlin-Brandenburg, Bucharest City Hall, SISP-Vilnius, ZTM-Warsaw and STIF – Paris – Ile-de-France) and allows them to work together and exchange best practices.
CAPRICE has a total budget of EUR 1.1 Million and it benefits from EU co-financing through INTERREG IV. PMB has a budget of EUR 173,000, of which the European Development Fund covers EUR 147,000 (85%). PMB provides co-financing of around EUR 26,000.
The first step towards creating a metropolitan transport authority
The workshop held in Bucharest had as main topic “Planning urban mobility and integrating public transport services in urban traffic management, urban mobility and public transport on demand”. The project also aims at establishing a legal framework, financing and organisation, implementing and operating a low-consumption vehicle fleet, providing flexible passenger information services and advanced ticketing technologies. Every partner involved in the CAPRICE project has to develop pilot-projects whose results and conclusions will lay the basis for the elaboration of a Best Practice Guideline for increasing energy efficiency in public transport. In Bucharest, the pilot-project includes, among others, the elaboration of a Service Contract Project between the municipality and the service provider (who is currently RATB) which can serve as a model of collaboration for the other partner authorities. The pilot-project includes the acquisition and organisation of an electronic tracking system for the indicators stipulated in the Service Contract Model etc. The objective is to harmonise the national and European public transport legislations and to analyse the existing constraints in order to identify the best solutions. METROUL SA will be involved in the pilot-project, acting as a consulting partner. The results will be presented during the final CAPRICE confe-rence held in March 2011 in Paris. PMB will gain many benefits from being involved in the CAPRICE project, including training the experts from the local administration in order to increase their ability to identify and implement strategic solutions for an integrated public transport system, as a first step towards the creation of a metropolitan transport authority.
by Alin Lupulescu
Share on:
