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4 articles
Vladimir Bolea, Minister of Infrastructure (left), and Vitalie Vrabie, Mayor of Ungheni, in front of the old station building in Ungheni, with a large, worn glass facade.
LOCAL

The Ungheni station, promised to the City Hall: an announcement without an act, money or deadline

On August 11, in Ungheni, Vladimir Bolea, the Minister of Infrastructure and Regional Development, announced that the bus and railway station will be transferred to the City Hall and turned into a multimodal hub, and the mayor, Vitalie Vrabie, promised swift investments. What that means, concretely: the public registers contain no decision — neither of the Municipal Council nor of the Government — on the transfer; the ministry's official press release from the same day does not even mention the station; and the contested routes from „Slavena” continue to depart from the same parking lot. Why a sentence spoken on the ground changes, for now, nothing on substance.

Ion Calmis·11 August 2026· Explainer
White minibuses lined up on a paved parking lot at a commercial center; on the right, a red-and-black container booth standing in for a ticket office.
LOCAL

The Slavena bus station in Ungheni: what the ANTA Order and the Municipal Council's decisions show

The Slavena bus station at Decebal 19/B in Ungheni has been registered with ANTA since September 2025, the agency confirms at the request of Triunghi.md. The applicable regime is notification, not authorization; the revocation of the Municipal Council's decision does not constitute grounds for removal from the register. The City Hall, which requested the removal, issued positive endorsements in 2026 for routes from the same bus station. The Council's urban-planning objections — commercial zone, no zonal plan, safety — fall outside ANTA's competence.

Ion Calmis·10 August 2026· Explainer
A contactless payment validator mounted on a pole inside a bus, showing a card pictogram and the message «Please validate your card or ticket» on its screen.
PUBLIC SERVICES

«Were not confirmed»: Ungheni's transport operator finds no double charge and will not say how it checked

Three days after several passengers complained, in the comments under the notice about paying by card on the bus, about multiple charges, SRL «Servicii Comunale Ungheni» announces that it «checked every case reported» and that nothing was confirmed, putting some of the complaints down to «fake profiles». The statement does not say how many cases were checked or by what method, and the questions Triunghi.md sent on 14 July remain unanswered. Under the notice, a woman from Ungheni keeps asking where the journeys on the travel card have gone.

Ion Calmis·17 July 2026· News
A contactless payment validator mounted on a pole inside a bus, showing a card pictogram and the message «Please validate your card or ticket» on its screen.
PUBLIC SERVICES

Ungheni's transport operator says double-charging is impossible. Its own website promises less — and nowhere does it say how you get your money back

Under the official notice about paying by card on the bus, people in Ungheni say they were charged twice and three times over, and one passenger says he paid 28 lei for a 6-lei ride. The operator guarantees on Facebook that «it is impossible to be charged twice». On its own portal, the guarantee is far narrower. We read the regulation approved by the local council, the operator's contract and the payment services law: the procedure by which a wrongly charged passenger gets their money back is written nowhere — but the law gives them firm deadlines, both with the operator and with the bank.

Ion Calmis·14 July 2026· Analysis