Starting on Saturday, August 6, Metrorex, the company operating the underground network in Bucharest, increases the prices of underground passes, a two-trip pass costing to 4 lei and a 62-trip season ticket, 35 lei, according to a release posted by the above-mentioned company on Friday.

Starting on August 6, a two-trip pass will cost 4 lei instead of 3 lei at present, the price of a 10-trip pass will increase to 10 lei from 9 lei at present and the price of a 62-trip pass comes to cost 35 lei from 27 lei now.

For the monthly ticket with an unlimited number of trips the price stays the same, 50 lei, and for the weekly one with an unlimited number of trips the price is still 15 lei. The one-day ticket will cost 6 lei too.

The company says that it decided to adjust the prices considering the fact that, in 2011, the ratio between the necessary subsidy and the subsidy that was allocated for covering the maintenance and repair of the underground installations and the rolling stock exceeded 126 percent, with a financing deficit amounting to about 90 million lei.

The subsidy granted by the Government for the underground fare has been constant in the past few years, about 60 percent of all the working expenses of the underground trains, and the tendency is that the share of the subsidy in covering expenses should go down to 50 percent, informs the above-mentioned company.

On the other hand, Metrorex says that the underground fare in Romania is very cheap when compared with other European states. Thus, if in Bucharest the current price of the underground fare is about 30 eurocents, in Budapest it is 1 euro, in Barcelona, 1.35 euros, in Madrid, 2 euros, in Berlin, 2.10 euros, in London 4.7 euros.