City Assembly cancels Belgrade trolleys – Room for entry of private transporters in system of public transport electric vehicles officially opened

As could be expected ahead of the session of the City Assembly of Belgrade, the majority in the parliament of the capital city voted in favor of replacing trolleys with electric buses.

The explanation of the decision says that the trolley transport in Belgrade has a rich history, but also big problems, such as the age of the vehicles and the equipment and low efficiency.

It is estimated that many trolley lines are in a bad condition, with obsolete poles and wires which haven’t been changed for years, which causes technical problems and slows down and impedes the traffic, and the rolling stock is old and inefficient.

GSP Beograd has 92 trolleys with an average age of over 15 years, and the most recent ones were bought 13 years ago, it is added.

Initially, the decision, explained this way, seems carefully analyzed and thought-through, but we only need to remind of the fact that, not so long ago, the Old Palace announced not the removal of the trolley subsystem, but its renewal through the purchase of about a hundred new vehicles, which would certainly be justified given that the city has invested considerable funds in the expansion of the trolley network in the center of the capital city in the past year. To all that, not so long ago, several year ago, the city also planned to extend the trolley lines to some settlements where they did not operate, especially once they realized that autonomous trolleys existed, that is, trolleys which can ride for a certain number of kilometers without the overhead line.

Still, as it seems following the adopted decision on the removal of trolleys, the interest of the current authorities in the capital city was not to implement such solutions or to renew the trolley rolling stock of GSP Beograd, but to comply with the interests of private transporters, which have, in this calendar year alone, gotten a big piece of the pie called the Belgrade public transport. In this case, as certain trade unions of GSP pointed out yesterday, it’s about the interests of what is now one of the city’s favorite private transporters, Strela.

Let us remind that the trade unions pointed out that mayor Aleksandar Sapic decided to accept, without any kind of transparent procedure, for Strela’s proposition for that private company to take over lines from GSP and for Belgrade to sign a 20-year agreement with Strela instead of buying trolleys for GSP, whereby the city would pay RSD 136.35 billion from the city budget for the period of the validity of the agreement, so that the company would deploy its electric buses. To add to all that, as the trade unions pointed out, the private transporter also requested that the city waive the trolley depot of GSP in Dorcol, so that that company would form its own garage on that land.

JKP GSP Beograd

ASP Strela doo Obrenovac

Vratimo trolu 28

GSP Beograd

ASP Strela Obrenovac

removal of trolleys in Belgrade