site.btaSofia Mayor: Data on Urban Mobility in Sofia Now Accessible to Everyone

Sofia’s urban mobility data is now open and accessible to everyone, Sofia Mayor Vassil Terziev announced on Facebook on Friday. The applications and website will show where buses, trams and trolleybuses are in real time, at what time they will be arriving, and which are the fastest routes from and to locations in the city, Terziev noted, stressing that citizens and programmers created the interactive maps and applications within just a few weeks without costing a single BGN from the municipality’s budget.

"This is not just a technological change, it is a new culture of governance, in which transparency, cooperation and innovation are not just slogans, but everyday practice", the Mayor emphasized, adding that an example of this is the joint work with citizens and experts who develop maps based on municipal data, including interactive maps of fountains, green spaces and flower containers, which were particularly useful during the waste crisis, when public control and shared information helped to ensure a faster and more accurate response.

Terziev pointed out that the next step is to open the data on the processed waste of the Sofia Waste Processing Plant and thanked Sofia Deputy Mayor Ivan Goychev and the team behind this initiative. "Sofia has the potential to be an example of digital transformation not only in Bulgaria, but also in the entire Balkan region. And I believe that we can achieve it, as long as our actions are not campaign-based, but are part of an overall strategy," he emphasized.