Sofia lacks parking spaces because some of the funds intended to complete underground car parks were spent on metro stations. This at least was one of the conclusions of a city hall discussion about the capital’s traffic problems. 

After some debate, Radoslav Toshev, head of the city hall’s transport committee, was quoted by Bulgarian-language Dnevnik as saying that there were currently four underground parking facilities next to metro stations. Unfortunately, these could not be used because they still awaited final completion. These parking facilities could have accommodated up to 1000 vehicles, providing much-needed relief for the city’s growing traffic burden. 

The largest of these four parking facilities has capacity for 500 spaces, Dnevnik said. It was built together with the Slivnitsa metro station that opened in 1998. Another was built next to the Vassil Levski National Stadium metro station. The other two were built near Serdika station and have a combined capacity for 360 vehicles. 

Unfortunately, part of the money for building the parking facilities went on constructing the metro stations. The city hall budget had set aside no money for the final work on the car parks, so rendering them unusable. It now has to decide how to finance the final construction, whether with its own funds or through public-private partnership.
 
"The main problem is that we don’t have a single project filed for the final stages of the car parks. The only project of the kind is filed by a private investor and concerns the area outside the Radisson Hotel. But this car park could not be used by the city hall," Toshev said.  

To amend this the working group plans that next year’s city hall budget could provide funds for 18 parking facilities with a total capacity for 5400 spaces. In other words, the city hall would finance work on the projects because there is no private interest in them at all.

Evaluating possible sites for car parks, the report targeted 15 school yards under which car parks could be built and an additional 34 land plots that could become car parks, the report said.

Lengthy inaction over the issue was not addressed during the discussion. In fact, the city hall only formed a working group on the issue three weeks after 14 reports were filed by Sofia’s chief architect Petar Dikov asking the city hall to launch tender procedures for the construction of car parks. According to Dikov’s proposals, private investors would have the right to build the facilities and collect revenue for 35 years after which ownership would revert back to the city hall.  

The city hall, however, decided that launching tenders was a fruitless proposition because of the lack of interest in concessions. Instead, councillors decided to form a working group with Toshev at its head. This, as emerged on November 17, redirected the problem to the mayor’s office who will shortly have to come up with a draft budget for next year.

So the ball will fall into the court of newly elected Sofia mayor Yordanka Fandukova who said that the city hall’s budget, together with finding money to keep the city clean during the winter, would be among her first priorities.