The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is providing a loan of up to €8 million to Kremenchuk municipal trolleybus company (KTU) for the acquisition of 50 new low-floor trolley buses, including spare parts and maintenance tools, as well as the workshop maintenance and diagnostic equipment for the new fleet.

The loan, which will be guaranteed by the municipality, will be supported by an investment grant of up to €2 million from the Eastern Europe Energy Efficiency and Environment Partnership (E5P), to which the European Union is the largest contributor. The investment in Kremenchuk will be the first urban transport project in Ukraine to benefit from an E5P grant.

Kremenchuk is an industrial city in central Ukraine with approximately 225,000 inhabitants. About 50,000 of them live across the Dnieper River and currently don’t have full access to the KTU service. The project will allow the municipal public transport operator to increase its level of service to households, currently not fully covered by it, by restoring two trolleybus routes on the right bank side of the city. The municipality will also contribute to the project by rehabilitating necessary infrastructure.

The project will enable the municipality to renew almost its entire trolleybus fleet, which will have a positive impact both on the scope and the quality of services. The new trolley buses, which will be procured in 2017, will be 20 per cent more efficient than the current ones, most of which are at least 15 years old. As a result of the renewal and the shift to energy efficient and environmentally friendly electric transport services, the municipality will benefit from the reduction of hazardous emissions, like CO2, Nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, which contribute to high pollution in the city.

Kremenchuk mayor Vitaliy Maletsky said: “The EBRD project will allow for a complete renewal of the electric transport fleet in Kremenchuk for the first time in the history of the city. Its implementation will provide the residents of all districts of the city with comfortable, affordable and environmentally friendly public transport."

Francis Malige, EBRD Managing Director for Eastern Europe and the Caucasus said: “By financing this project we are not only supporting ecologically clean and modern municipal service. We are also providing affordable transport and services to low income families and senior citizen. The EBRD is grateful to E5P and the EU for their crucial support for the project, without which it would have never materialised.”

The project is implemented under the Ukraine Public Transport Framework approved by the EBRD in 2015. The facility is designed to help replace ageing municipal transport with new ecologically friendly rolling stock.

The EBRD is the largest international financial investor in Ukraine. To date, the Bank has made a cumulative commitment of almost €12 billion through 369 projects since the start of its operations in the country in 1993.