On Thursday, the decision of the Administrative Court came out, with which the traffic changes in the center of Sofia are stopped, BNR recalled.
The Deputy Mayor for the “Transport and Urban Mobility“ in the Capital Municipality, Iliyan Pavlov explained that since the court's decision came out late last night, he has not yet become familiar with the reasons.
„Today I will get to know the reasons of the court and then I will be able to comment”, said Pavlov.
He added that there is currently a count of cyclists, pedestrians and cars on the boulevards with a new traffic organization in place. A working group with various experts is about to be created, which will monitor the data and if there is something worrisome, it will be removed, the deputy mayor explained, adding that when the project was presented 4 years ago, there was a similar census.
„This reorganization is not accidental in many of the strategic documents and plans of the municipality and it has been proven by experts that it is necessary. This is a transformation well known in the west, ie. to give priority to pedestrians, public transport, cyclists and only then to cars, since central spaces and streets are quite limited.
Sofia is far behind not only in bicycle transport and its connectivity, but also in solving bigger problems like parking. And you see that this year we spent millions on parking lots. Sofia is very backward in many parameters and we cannot wait for one thing to happen for the other or for the second thing to happen for the third. Many processes must run in parallel. "There will really be some inconvenience," explained Iliyan Pavlov.
In his words, the traffic reorganization project in the center of Sofia is balanced. He pointed out that no parking is prohibited anywhere, although parking is prohibited on boulevards of the primary network.
„I don't know exactly what is going wrong, maybe the easiest explanation is that we are in an election campaign”, Iliyan Pavlov concluded.