OBSERVER - July 12 2004

The General Mayor of Bucharest, Traian Basescu, has changed his strategy. He showed the agenda of the council meeting before this was approved or disapproved by the counselors. MONICA ANDREI

The chief municipal administrator of Bucharest showed yesterday to the reporters the projects that are to be discussed tomorrow in the General council of the Capital meeting. Due to the fact that most of the counselors are on his side he immediately put into the agenda of the council meeting the projects that have been rejected by the Social Democratic Party (SDP) during his former mandate.

"The Nord Underground Parking, the Basarab Overhead Passage and the modernization of the trams are to be discussed in the council meeting. This is not one of my ambitiousness; these projects are a part of the programme which helped win the elections", said the mayor yesterday. In order that the people should understand the reason of spending millions of euro for these projects, the General Mayor described each one of them again.

INVESTMENTS. So building the Basarab Passage means spending approximately 74 million euros, with a total length of 1,124 meters, and 36 meters wide, having two lanes and a tram line. The Nord Parking will cost 25 million euros and will have three underground levels, under the park in front of the Ministry of Transports headquarters. The modernization of the trams means restoring 130 gears, the cost accepted by the European Bank of Investments (EBI) being 500,000 euro per tram. Basescu also said that for the thermal registration project the municipality obtained a financial surplus of about 15 million euros. He intends to use this for the modernization of the streets, 1,800 in total, of course after the approval of EBI and of the general counselors.

THE CAPITAL CLEANED AT NIGHT Starting from the 1st