Zagreb to get 20 new low-floor trams

A grant contract for the procurement of the 20 trams was signed by Transport Minister Oleg Butkovic, Central Finance and Contracting Agency director Dragan Jelic, and the director of Zagreb's public transport operator ZET, Marko Bogdanovic.

Tomasevic said new trams were finally being bought after 17 years and that there were no plans to raise the price of public transport tickets in the next few months.

The biggest thanks for the new trams goes to the government and the transport ministry because the money for them will be absorbed from the NRRP, he added.

He also thanked the government for the measures to stabilise electricity prices, saying that unchecked hikes would have hit ZET and the water utility the most. He added that electricity costs 45 million kuna (€5.9 million) a year, and there was a risk of it increasing 15 times.

Tomasevic said the capital's tram grid would be expanded and hoped some of the projects would be financed from EU funds.

Bogdanovic said the procurement of 20 new trams was the first step in ZET's modernisation and that the goal was to procure 80 new low-floor trams in the period ahead.

Butkovic said the procurement of the 20 trams was the biggest single NRRP project. He recalled that a few weeks ago, ZET also obtained 45 new buses financed with EU funds and that a significant part of the tram infrastructure in Zagreb was renovated in the past operational period.

The minister said Zagreb lacked 60 new trams and that the government and his ministry remained the city's partners in procuring them. He added that a similar contract would be signed for the eastern city of Osijek.

Butkovic noted that an NRRP contract was signed on the procurement of new battery-powered trains a few days ago and that a 250 million (€33.1 million) kuna NRRP contract was signed on the renovation of the railway through Zagreb.

He told Tomasevic that he had to "tackle the new challenges, which are a new railway, a fast railway to the airport."

(€1 = 7.5 kuna)