Good practice:

Green Friday - Stop! Leave your car at home!

The City Hall and Local Council of Cluj-Napoca implement the program "Friday Green — Stop! Today the car stays on the spot!" in collaboration with the Public Transport Company Cluj-Napoca.
In this regard, every Friday, citizens from Cluj-Napoca and not only can travel free of charge by the fleet of electric public transport (buses, trolleybuses or trams) on any urban line in the city.
This initiative will help reduce noise pollution, chemical pollution, increase the load of transport capacities to decongest traffic in urban areas and thus reduce the number of accidents.
This initiative will be applied continuously in the city of Cluj-Napoca, without interrupting or cancelling.
Being at the beginning, only 4 months have passed since the start of this initiative, we do not yet have statistical data that will allow us to analyze over a representative period of time (e.g. 1 year after the start of the initiative), but we are convinced that it will be a successful initiative that will substantially reduce noise pollution, chemical pollution (massive reduction of the carbon footprint), increasing the load of urban electric public transport capacities, decongesting traffic and thus reducing the number of accidents.

The cost of the “Green Friday - Stop! Leave your car at home!” program will be covered by Cluj-Napoca City Hall, as the decision was made on 21 April 2021.
All costs related to this initiative are borne by the Local Budget of Cluj-Napoca City Hall.

A study on the evolution of travelers - before and after the implementation of the Green Friday program, according to data collected during March / September 2021 from a number of 200 electric vehicles equipped with THOREB passenger counting system. (Technical error declared by +/- 5%) shows that after the implementation of the Green Friday program, there was a 56% increase in the number of passengers transported on Fridays compared to a 42% increase valid for another working day of the week.

We consider this practice (or some aspects of this practice) as being potentially interesting for other regions to learn from because the “Green Friday” project aims, in essence, to promote the use of electric public transport, as a measure to improve the quality of the surrounding air, but also to reduce the noise level, by granting free public transport, on urban lines, in each Friday.
The main goal of the “Green Fridays” initiative is to reduce congestion and pollution while increasing the number of passengers using public transport. The initiative aims to encourage the use of the city's public transport system, which is equipped with an environmentally friendly fleet. This, in turn, will help to achieve the project’s goals including:
• Reducing noise pollution;
• Improving air quality;
• Reducing traffic congestion;
• Reducing road accidents by lowering the number of vehicles on the road;
• Promoting the use of electric. transport and reducing the costs per passenger