Bucharest mayor Sorin Oprescu recently said that he plans to purchase 50 trolley buses from the municipality of Chisinau, the Moldavian capital city, which cost EUR 130,000 apiece, and are cheaper than those produced by the Romanian company Astra Arad.

According to  Oprescu, buying similar products from Western Europe would be more expensive. Bucharest needs 50 new trolleybuses and 400 new trams so that the city can look like a "normal city", the mayor added.

Last year the Chisinau City Hall purchased 102 such trolley buses from Belkomunmash, at a total cost of EUR 13.7 million, which sets the price of the Belarus trolleys to about EUR 130,000 a piece.

The existing Bucharest trolley buses were produced by the Astra factory in Arad, Romania, but the factory has not  sold any products to the capital city lately, only to the cities of Cluj and Galati.

Astra representatives said they received a call for proposals from RATB- the Bucharest public transport company a year ago, but nothing was settled. A trolley bus produced by Astra Bus costs on average EUR 260,000, "but is manufactured to current standards of Europe, not under patents from 20 years ago", according to Astra reps.

RATB currently has a fleet of 300 Astra trolleybuses bought between 1997 and 2008.

Ioana Toader, ioana.toader@romania-insider.com

(photo source: bkm.by)