STA, 28 January 2019 - The Ljubljana municipality plans to increase the prices of several services provided by its companies, including public transport, parking fees in the city centre, and cemetery fees.
A single bus ticket would go up by 10 cents to 1.30 euro, Mayor Zoran Janković said at the city's news conference on Monday.
The city also intends to introduce an annual public transport pass, which would cost 365 euro, and an annual pass for pensioners, to cost 220 euro.
If the new prices are endorsed by the city council in February, they would take effect in April or May, the mayor said.
Peter Horvat, director of the city's public transport company LPP, said the goal was not to increase prices but the number of public transport users and the number of bus pass holders, from 70% at the moment to 90%.
Javni Holding Ljubljana director Zdenka Grozde said the services provided by Ljubljana's companies were of very high quality, comparable to other European cities.
"To attain such top quality services, investments into development, technology and infrastructure are needed," she said, thus revealing the reason for the price rises.
She said LPP had bought 168 new buses since 2007, which cost it 42 million euro, but had not changed ticket prices for eight years.
A rise in parking fees for parking lots in the city centre (zone one and two) by 10 centres per hour and in car parks operated by Ljubljana is also planned.
The hourly parking fee for the car park below Congress Square and for the Kozolec car park is to rise to 1.50 euro.
According to David Polutnik from the city's economy and transport department, this is to reduce the number of commuters in the city centre.
Mateja Duhovnik, who heads the company running the city's parking spaces, said parking fees in others zones would not change nor would they change for Ljubljana residents in car parks.
Meanwhile, the fee for a grave at Ljubljana's main cemetery is to rise by 10%.
Žale director Robert Martinčič said the city had intensively invested into expanding its cemeteries over the past few years, "which means we'll have new grave areas which will need maintenance".
