After the Bucharest Mayor Gabriela Firea announced two days ago the city hall’s intention to enforce a pollution tax in the city as of next year for the vehicles that are not from Bucharest and Ilfov county in order to curb the pollutant emissions, the Municipality has come up with further explanations on Friday, arguing the decision is prompted by the concerning figures on the upward trend of pollution in the Romanian Capital.
“As for the fake information spread in the public space by the representatives of some political parties who do not understand or deliberately ignore the benefits of the project presented by the Bucharest Mayor Gabriela Firea, through which an electronic vignette is introduced for the road traffic on the public roads of Bucharest, for the motor vehicles with a high degree of pollution, the Bucharest Municipality specifies: considering that Bucharest ranks 6th in the top of the most polluted cities in Europe, concrete steps are needed to improve the air quality. In Romania, Bucharest is on 4th spot as the most polluted city, after northeastern Iasi, centre-western Cluj-Napoca and central Brasov, with measurements pointing that the very core of Bucharest is a ‘peak area’ of both traffic congestion and pollution generated by the motor vehicles. We underline that one of the main reasons why pollution record values are recorded is the thick road traffic, caused by the large-scale use of one’s own vehicle,” the Bucharest City Hall argues.
According to the source, the number of the motor vehicles crossing Bucharest has doubled in the last 10 years, hence the pollution values are 9-10 times higher that the allowed limits.