EU funds minister predicts Cluj-Napoca to be the second Romanian city with over 1 million inhabitants
Marcel Boloş, the Minister of European Investments and Projects, said during the Mission 2030 - Romania's Road to Green Transport event that Cluj-Napoca, following the ongoing subway construction in the city, has the potential to become the second Romanian city to have over 1 million population.
"Cluj will be the first city in Romania that has the difficult task of implementing the metro project, which will make Cluj a town with a potential of over 1 million inhabitants so that we no longer have everything concentrated in Bucharest," said the minister quoted by Ziarul Financiar.
The construction, while it's currently being halted due to the staggering inflation and the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, is worth over EUR 1.3 billion and partially financed by the Recovery and Resilience Facility (PNRR). Cluj-Napoca's mayor Emil Boc launched the tender for the design in March this year.
The radial transformation will increase the mobility of the city's population to almost three times higher, revamping the area of the regional center.
Some 410.000 inhabitants reside in the metropolitan area of Cluj, as of September 2022, and the number is expected to grow in the forthcoming years, putting pressure on the improvement of public transport and road infrastructure sectors.
"After consulting the transport minister, we decided to temporarily suspend the procurement procedure until we update the technical-economic indicators of the investment. This is necessary to update the cost of building the subway considering that in recent months the prices have increased at an accelerated rate," says the mayor.
(Photo source: Primaria Cluj-Napoca)
