Recently, cars with license plate ending letters ХТ have begun to be noticed on the capital's boulevards - the final chord of the traditional alphabetic series, and many wondered whether the era of the first designating letters for Sofia registration SV is not coming to an end. However, it turned out that the Traffic Police still has a few more tricks up its sleeve before resorting to a completely new regional code.
To delay the inevitable, the Ministry of Interior resorted to a move that until recently seemed like a backup option - the mass introduction of vowels in registration series. Although only 12 graphic characters common to the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets are used as standard (A, B, E, K, M, N, O, R, S, T, U, X), for a long time vowels remained in the background. After A and E were gradually “activated” over the past two years, on November 7, the Sofia Police officially put into circulation the series starting with the letter O at the end of the license plate for Sofia residents.
Currently, the Traffic Police issues OA-type plates at the end of the number, with the transition to the entire spectrum up to OH. This Sofia math provides exactly 109,989 new sets of license plates. With an average registration rate of between 500 and 600 cars per day, this “vowel” reserve will be a breath of fresh air for the system over the next 8-9 months.
However, the question of what will happen after that remains open. The Sofia Police admit that a thorough check of every remaining unused symbol is underway, but a new letter code to succeed the SV has not yet been officially approved.
History remembers that the S series served us faithfully for 13 years, while the next SA was exhausted in nine. The SV was born in November 2014 and, despite initial predictions that it would survive only seven summers, it continues to fight for its place in the sun thanks to administrative maneuvers with the letters at the end.
The evolution of Sofia license plates is long and dynamic - from the old black enameled numbers with the abbreviation “Сф“ to today's high-tech plates. It remains to be seen whether Sofia will dawn with a new identity on its bumpers, or whether the traffic police will discover another hidden algorithm within the current standard.