When the metro officially opens its extension to the Mladost district station, Sofia city has suggested that it could introduce a tax for all cars entering the central part of the city. The charge would apply to the area between Patriarh Evtimii, Hristo Botev, Dondoukov and Maria Louisa boulevards.

On January 15, Sofia deputy mayor in charge of transport, Velizar Stoilov, spoke to The Sofia Echo on the issue. He said it was still too early to describe his idea in detail because, according to him, people become nervous when they only hear about the plans and no other alternatives are offered.

“After the metro starts operating, then we can talk about this idea,” Stoilov said. By then, people visiting the city and local residents will have the option of driving to the underground stations and using the metro to complete their journey into the centre. It is with this in mind that the city has ordered the construction of underground parking lots at the new metro stations, Stoilov said.

“Almost every metro station will have underground parking,” Stoilov said. According to him, the metro station at Dragan Tsankov Boulevard, for example, will have a “big parking” space with about 500 bays.

The same companies were in charge of building the metro and constructing the car parks. The Japanese Tai Sei Corporation has the contracts to build the new stations at Sofia University and near the Bulgarian National Radio building (Dragan Tsankov Boulevard). Several Bulgarian firms were in charge of the rest of the stations along the line.

However, at the same time Stoilov said that the city needed to offer people alternative roads, which they can use to reach the centre or the opposite side of the city in a car. He said new streets were being constructed.

Questioned about the city’s plan to provide bicycle lanes, Stoilov said they were working on five main bicycle routes. “Now cyclists can use the bicycle lane that starts at Sveta Nedelya Square, continues along Vitosha Boulevard through Bulgaria Square in front of the National Palace of Culture (NDK), goes over the bridge behind NDK through the park behind Hilton hotel,” Stoilov said. He said the city was connecting this bicycle lane with Sofia ring road. However, he did not say when and how the rest of the routes would be built.

The bicycle lane described is only distinguished by yellow paint, it has not been built using a different colour asphalt or any other alternatives that might make it more visible. Stoilov has said he is sceptical about cycling in Sofia. However, this seems to be one of the few alternatives, together with encouraging a higher usage of public transport, that the city has to overcome its current traffic problems. More than a million cars are registered in Sofia.

There is another reason that the centre of Sofia could be closed to cars. On January 14 the municipality environment department director Petar Traikov said that vehicles would be banned from entering the city centre when the board monitoring harmful emissions registered levels above the recommended maximum over a 10 day period.

The board reads the levels of poisonous gases and dust in the air, Bulgarian-language daily Monitor reported.

“If the quantities of carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and fine dust particles in the atmosphere above Sofia exceed the norms several times, a ban on vehicles could become necessary to improve the situation,” Traikov said. “In this case cars will be redirected via alternative routes,” he said.

These actions are part of an emergency plan, which city experts are currently developing based on Italian and German odels.

The Regional Inspectorate of Environment and Waters (RIEW) in Sofia said the dust quantity in the air was six times above the norm on January 13 and 14. The main reasons for this were the large volumes of traffic and the fog.

Experts said very often during the hottest summer months the quantities of poisonous gases in the air around Sofia exceeded the recommended norms, this was mainly because of high levels of carbon dioxide. RIEW said that its had set 10 micrograms a cu m of air as the maximum admissible value of pollutants in the air.

According to experts, the dust and seasonal atmospheric pollution from poisonous gases was a reason to take measures towards decreasing traffic in Sofia, which has a population of almost two million people.

“If the quantities of the harmful elements in the air were indeed so high during a certain time period, we would look for different solutions of the problem. Traffic restrictions in the centre is a final, drastic solution and we are unlikely to implement it,” Stoilov said.

The city said that other two panels to read air quality will be placed in the city. One of them will be near National Palace of Culture and the other at another key point in Sofia.

In the middle of December 2007 the first digital panel was installed on the corner of Moskovska and Georgi Sava Rakovski streets in the centre of Sofia, near the municipality building, as previously reported by The Sofia Echo. The panel has two readings. One shows the recommended maximum value of air pollutants and the other their current values.