Sofia Municipal Council is to decide Thursday if the regular ticket for one trip in the public transport of the Bulgarian capital would be increased to BGN 1 from the current BGN 0,7.

The proposal over the 43% increase was filed by the Deputy Mayor Velizar Stoilov and the municipality's Transport Commission Chair Radoslav Toshev.

If adopted, the hike will enter into force on July 1, 2008. According to Borisov, the measure is motivated by the rising gas prices.

The price increase had originally been planned for May 1 but the Mayor Boyko Borisov withdrew his support for the move at the time with the argument that the price could not be raised unless the service improved.

The new measure provides for no changes in the prices of the monthly tickets for students, retirees, disabled people and orphans. The ticket for ten trips is going to cost BGN 7,5 up from the current BGN 6.

The planned increase in the Sofia public transport prices would be the only one in 2008. Representatives of Sofia Municipality have pointed out that the public transport prices have not been updated since 2001.

Meanwhile, a recent report of the Open Society Institute exposed the inability of the Sofia Public Transport to combat the practice of passengers traveling without tickets.

According to the report, published in April, only 0,2% of all passengers without tickets were fined in 2007, which brought the company a loss of BGN 38 M.

The number of persons traveling without a ticket every day is estimated at about 150,000 whereas only 90,550 persons were fined for all of 2007.

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