The Municipality of Ramnicu Valcea implemented during the last 4 years various projects and initiatives meant at improving and putting into practice a clean, sustainable public transportation in town. Thus, by developing various projects with European funds, Ramnicu Valcea has now a new, "green" fleet with buses that use natural compressed gas and in the coming year, the whole metropolitan area of Ramnicu Valcea will benefit from green, electric vehicles. The local authority recently refurbished 98 bus stations. The local authority and the Municipality's public transportation society put into practice a center for the traffic management which will have the role of prioritizing buses in traffic, so that public transport becomes in the near future a serious option when considering the use of personal car.
Most important, in order to support and promote citizen participation in the sustainable urban development decision making process at the local level, the Municipality of Ramnicu Valcea set up, for the first time in Romania, a citizens jury on urban mobility issues. The Municipality of Râmnicu Vâlcea, in partnership with the Vâlcea Community Foundation and the Happy Cities Associations put into practice, with the support of experts from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and of the European Commission (DG Regio), Romania’s first citizens jury on sustainable urban mobility. The project aims to involve citizens directly in the design and implementation of EU cohesion policy as well as in the decision making process at the local level, especially on issues regarding urban mobility.
The civic lottery and the citizens' jury meetings and deliberations took place in March -June 2024.
The selection of the members of the Citizens’ Jury was made though a civic lottery. 2000 households randomly selected received an invitation letter to join the process, among those citizens that accepted the Municipality’s invitation, a second random selection took place to define the 20 jurors.
The 20 jury members learned from experts, discussed, and finally formulated a set of suggestions and recommendations that will be submitted to the City Council’s approval by the end of this year. The set of recommendations had to answer the question:
What measures should take the Municipality of Râmnicu Vâlcea to increase the attractiveness of public transportation and other sustainable means of transportation in town in order to reduce traffic jam and therefore the amount of CO2 emissions in town?