Ilfov County Council in Romania is to host a public debate on the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) drafted for the Bucharest-Ilfov region.

The SUMP aims to achieve an efficient, integrated, sustainable and secure transport system from 2016-2030 to promote economic and social cohesion and ensure a better quality of life for citizens.

The mayor of Bucharest has announced that 30 per cent of the new buses that are being purchased by the city's public transport operator RATB will be electric.

‘We are preparing extremely important documentation for the purchase of 500 new buses, badly needed for renewing the RATB fleet,' Mayor Gabriela Firea said.

‘Thirty per cent of these buses will be electric, which is a good sign, because we are investing in the environment.’

The preparatory documents are nearing completion and the city expects to finalise the procurement in February 2017.

Bucharest has launched a new network of automated bike-sharing stations to help ease traffic and contribute to greater urban mobility in the Romanian capital.

I'Velo Urban, which was unveiled yesterday, is a project by Romanian environmental NGO Green Revolution, Raiffeisen Bank and retailer Kaufland Romania.

The network consists of six automated stations in the most important areas in the city, on public transport routes with high numbers of passengers. It includes 210 bicycles that can be rented 24 hours a day in any season.

Bucharest’s public transport operator is in discussions with the mayor over a project to install lanes only for public transport.

The Autonomous Transportation Enterprise of Bucharest (RATB) is proposing to create 12 single-lane major arteries in the capital for buses, shuttles and taxis.

Bucharest currently has 5.8 km of lanes that are exclusively for the use of public transport.

The new network would span 20.5 km and, according to RATB, increase the operating speed of buses from 13 km/h to 20 km/h.

Romania's second-largest city will become the first in the country to use fully electric buses in 2017.

The municipality has already begun the procurement process for 30 electric buses, which will replace part of the current fleet that run on petrol and which have in the past been received second hand from the capital, Bucharest.

The total cost of the buses is around 71 million Romanian lei ( € 15.9 million ) and each bus has a range of 250 kilometres on a single three-hour charge, making them well-suited to operate on a daily basis.

A new sustainable urban mobility network that will help Romanian cities and organisations learn about and exchange experiences on mobility and transport launched last month in Timișoara.

Created by the EU-funded CIVITAS Initiative, the Romanian national network joins CIVINET – a group of European city networks that promote local sustainable urban mobility.

The Romanian town of Baia Sprie recently hosted a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) working group together with citizens to help develop the document in a transparent and participatory manner.

Mayor Dorin Paşca attended the session with residents, other local government officials, and stakeholders involved in the plan’s development.

Bucharest's metro network has announced that it will implement routes for use by visually-impaired passengers at its existing metro stations.

The routes will be marked using special ceramic tiles. It is one of a number of measures that the Bucharest metro is developing to ensure that passengers with disabilities and additional needs are accommodated on the network.

The Romanian government has announced that it will spend 220 million Romanian leu (€ 48.85m) on encouraging people to scrap their older cars and buy cleaner vehicles.

One of the first measures will be to improve a current scrappage scheme, known as Rabla – under which citizens receive 6,500 Romanian Lei (€ 1 440) for scrapping vehicles older than 8 years.

Originally designed to take the most polluting cars off the roads, the environment ministry has now introduced two ‘eco-bonuses’ to the scheme.