Regia Autonomă de Transport Bucureşti is a public surface transit operator in Bucharest, the capital of Romania. It operates a complex network of buses, trams and trolleybuses. In fact, it operates all public transport in Bucharest except the metro, which is operated by Metrorex. While owned entirely by the public sector, it is an autonomous corporation.

Despite many comments in the 1990s about the poor state of Bucharest's transport system, RATB is a reasonably efficient and a very frequent way to get around Bucharest. As with the Metro, the system is going under a period of renewal, making it one of the most modern and comfortable in Eastern Europe, especially with the introduction of new acoustic station announcement in the trolleybuses and the Light Rail Service (lines 35, 32 and 41). The Light Rail Service plans are extremely ambitious; for the moment it was built only in the western region. There will be 3 major lines crossing the city in the first phase: line 35 from Militari to Cismigiu, line 32 from Rahova to Piata Unirii and line 41 from Piata Presei Libere to Ghencea. In a second phase line 21 will be upgraded to a light rail service. New Alstom buses have also been bought and will probably be used on the most crowded lines in Bucharest (368, 226 and 336). RATB is the fourth biggest ground transportation network in Europe operating about 1.700.000 fares a day on 30 tram lines, 20 trolleybus lines and 101 bus lines. RATB operates buses on all major streets and avenues of Bucharest, its adverisment saying that you cannot be more than 5 minutes away from a bus stop. The system usually gets extremely crowded during peak hours.

External links

• Official site