12 ms·
An entrepreneur has built a one-metre-long stretch of motorway in Romania
- iso1337 8y agoAccording to Wikipedia Romania has: 22,247 km (13,824 mi) of railroad tracks And 807 km of motorways In contrast the UK (similarly sized, within 2% of area) has 16000 km of railway and 3688 km of highway https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_road_network_size https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_road_ne...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cbg0 8y agoMore relevant stats are in the tables on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usage#Passengers_carried_in_rail_transport_per_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usag... While the UK has ~1700 million passengers per year traveling by rail, Romania has 61 million.
- iso1337 8y agoThanks! Super interesting. I don’t live in the EU, but how does public infrastructure funding work? Are there no funds to invest in infrastructure? It seems like trading partners would benefit a lot from a more connected Romania.
- Tsubasachan 8y agoTo be perfectly honest Romania has as much economic importance to the functioning of the EU as the Arizonian desert does to the US. That said the EU has transferred billions to Bucharest over the years. What the Romanian government has done with that money is frankly not something anyone really wants to investigate.
- jen729w 8y agoIt’s geopolitics. “Not become friends with Russia” is what Bucharest has achieved with €bns.
- cbg0 8y ago> To be perfectly honest Romania has as much economic importance to the functioning of the EU as the Arizonian desert does to the US. This is a gross exaggeration. We are a country of around 20 million people and we export a diverse array of finished goods, not to mention setting up shop in Romania if you are a multinational company is very useful as the standard of living is lower and you can pay less than you would pay a German, for example. > What the Romanian government has done with that money is frankly not something anyone really wants to investigate. Actually it is investigated, nobody's really turning a blind eye to these things. The EU has an anti-fraud office specifically for this: https://ec.europa.eu/anti-fraud/home_en https://ec.europa.eu/anti-fraud/home_en Also, the European Public Proscutor's office will be set up in the very near future to specifically prosecute fraud concerning EU funds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Public_Prosecutor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Public_Prosecutor On the military side, we host part of the NATO missile defense system.
- hedora 8y agoHonestly, what you are describing sounds a lot like Arizona (though its population is only 7M, and the economy is mostly mining and real estate / services for retirees / tourists). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona Anyway, I don’t mean any offense to Arizona or Romania. Both places have their upsides, like anywhere else.
- simion314 8y agoRomania has a diverse economy, it is not based on mining, you have many multinationals int he big cities because of high education level(high education is free) of the young people. So we have educated programmers, engineers (as an example some car parts are designed here, some car parts are created here for different manufacturers)
- kzrdude 8y agoInvesting in Romanian infra is primarily something that Romania is responsible for itself, but there is some funding from the EU level. One can browse projects here: https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/atlas/romania/ https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/atlas/romania/
- cbg0 8y agoIt's a combination of incompetence as well as corruption on behalf of the authorities in Romania. The EU keeps a close eye on what their money is being spent on, so lining your pocket with highway money given to you by the EU is a bit of a no-no. What people seem to remember is who cut the ribbon, so it's a bit of a risk for a party that has a 4 year mandate to build something and not finish it during their term as nobody will remember that they started a project. For the last two or so years the political alliance in charge of things has been mostly focusing on making the laws more lax as most of them have legal problems, instead of focusing on the peoples' problems. We get what we deserve, since you never really do see a smart people ruled by idiots.
- virgilp 8y agoI was with you up until the last phrases. Speak for yourself, I guess? It may be what you deserve, but I know a lot of people who deserve better. Also you see smart people ruled by idiots all the time. See USA for an example
- PedroBatista 8y agoThey aren’t idiots, they are gangsters with a suit. It happens in every country.
- Retric 8y agoPassengers is a funny static as distance makes a real difference. On top of that there is a 3x difference in population size. Edit: It’s 80 billion passenger kilometres per year which is a respectable 3+ kilometres per person per day.
- mjw1007 8y agoI don't think your first sentence is right. From the link: « The London Underground ("The Tube") had an additional 1.34 billion passengers in 2015-16 »
- Retric 8y agoData was from here which includes several underground stations. https://orr.gov.uk/statistics/published-stats/station-usage-estimates https://orr.gov.uk/statistics/published-stats/station-usage-... But, they are counting only long distance rail. Anyway, 80 billion passenger kilometres, per year is very good relative to 327.1 billion miles driven.
- oblio 8y agoDoes the UK have no highways or equivalent to Edinburgh or Birmingham? Cause Romania has barely connected 2 out of 6 of its bigger cities. And it definitely does not even have the strategic highways. Plus you wouldn't want a be stuck in one of our trains going at 60kmph for 6-8 hours, trust me ;)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- YawningAngel 8y agoWe have motorways that go to every major city, why on earth wouldn't we?
- chrisseaton 8y agoThere are a few major cities that have no motorway anywhere near them. Of course it depends on what you think is a major city, but Aberdeen for example, the third biggest city in Scotland, has no motorway closer than a hundred miles or so. There are highways between every mainland settlement though, obviously.
- smcl 8y agoAs an Aberdonian who hasn’t been back for a while - does the A92 ever get clogged enough to the point that a motorway is required? Or is there some suggestion that linking Aberdeen-Dundee-Edinburgh/Glasgow with motorway would stimulate the economy? I’m pretty disconnected from this stuff back home so this is an honest question :-)
- chrisseaton 8y agoNo idea - I've never been there - I just know it doesn't have a motorway anywhere near it.
- smcl 8y ago
- jacquesm 8y agoYou simply can't compare a mile of Romanian railroad tracks with a mile of UK railroad track. I've been on trains many times on Romania and the tracks are so bad the speed limit is somewhere between 5 and 30 mph on large stretches of track, only right on the outskirts of big cities is it a bit better.
- HNLurker2 8y agoI commute everyday to high school with trains (because it's free) but they are same speed as 50 years ago.
- k3liutZu 8y agoSome of them (I would wager a good chunk) actually go slower than 50 years ago.
- Xelbair 8y agoSo on par with the UK? :) I am joking but my experiences with UK Rail made Polish railways look good.
- jacknews 8y agoAlso, population of UK 67m, Romania 19m
- oblio 8y agoTrue, but this is not impossible, even with 19m people. It's doable, smaller countries have done it. It's a matter of willpower.
- masklinn 8y agoThat's not wrong, but romania also has a challenging topography, and a population density in the lower half of the EU.
- oblio 8y agoThe Carpathian mountains have been breached almost every time an army came barging in, from the dawn of history. If men marching and carrying 40 kilos of supply could do it while being fired at, the locals should definitely be able to do it in their own backyard in peace time :D PS: They can barely build highways in Muntenia, which is flat as a pancake. It would be underwater in case the ocean level rises...
- enkid 8y agoI think communist liked railroad s. Probably the necessary central control.
- masklinn 8y ago> 22,247 km (13,824 mi) of railroad tracks That can be misleading if these are the late 19th / early 20th century railroad tracks which got dismantled in most of the west (due to road competition) especially as it's unlikely they got upgraded. For instance the french railway system has contracted by half since its height in 1914, Belgium's didn't contract quite that much but not far (according to wikipedia there were 5300km of tracks in 1912, today there are 3600). Many of the smaller single-track ways linking small villages got progressively abandoned during the 50s and 60s, as local train lines were replaced by buses, cars and trucks (for freight).
- wastedhours 8y agoI've never seen a train in Romania with more than 4 carriages - there might be some out there, but from a utilisation perspective, it's shocking.
- yeahitslikethat 8y agoFrom another perspective Romania is on the right track. They haven't over built roads that suit individuals, rather they are focusing on mass transit. This is just a wasteful stunt. The only shame is on himself.
- oblio 8y agoWTF? What "mass transit" are you going on about? Our railways are decaying and the average speed is around 60 kmph. Air transport is super inefficient in super expensive for the average Romanian, for internal flights. A whole region of the country is cut off from development because on a 400 km radius the fastest you can go, legally, over long distances, is an average of 70 kmph.
- snvzz 8y agoSo if I understand it correctly, the railways need improvement? I'd put the effort there, mass transit is much more sensible than cars.
- oblio 8y agoDude, we're not talking about California-style "save the world" here. We're talking about providing a EU member non Third World infrastructure. Trains would be awesome, but they need to be correlated with the local needs. Romania is poor and has low density. High speed trains are super expensive and only serve cities, basically. We need decent roads and highways.
- yeahitslikethat 8y agoThat's what everyone says and why the world is in the mess it's in. Roads are antiquated technology. Romania has a chance to leapfrog most of the world and it seems you're looking backward.
- quickthrower2 8y ago
- afarrell 8y agoThis seems less like “shame” and more like “create a symbol of a public policy desire around which people can gather and signal to politicians in the hopes that the politicians will see construction as a action to get votes.”
- petre 8y agoThey get the votes anyway. The worst ones. People who vote for them don't care much about highways, they care about their pensions and public sector salaries not being cut. Otherwise you're right. I tend to view the one metre of highway as unintended contemporary art.
- HNLurker2 8y ago> I tend to view the one metre of highway as unintended contemporary art. Can you elaborate? Sometimes I distract myself so much from my country politics (Romania) that I even (guilty admit) I forget I live there.
- petre 8y agoThe autor intended a protest but he did more than just that in reality. His work would easily qualify as contemporary art if announced in a "proper" context: open air art exhibit with wine, pastry, a sophisticatedly worded brochure and invited art critics. I'm not saying he should have done that, but it is art, regardless. This stunt hints a bit at the Russian Voina performance art group, but they're even more radical and labelled as hooligans by the state media. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voina https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voina Add to that the country wide 15 minute strike that followed. That one was huge. Cars stoped dead in the street in major cities, big companies stopped work. Wow. Just think: a protest art event with hundreds of thousands people participating.
- tudorconstantin 8y agoThis was built to shame the politicians, not the nation (although we can extrapolate that a nation has the leaders it deserves - the ones it voted for).
- wastedhours 8y agoAnd the PSD will continue to not do anything, extend the pensions and bank holidays for public sector workers to get the votes, and then continue to do nothing.
- gianteu 8y agoEU is at fault here See in EU smoking is considered a personal choice as some girl told me But healthcare is publicly funded and all tax payers subsidize wrong personal choices of other people. This way even the people who are making sound decisions end up paying for people with irrational believes and bad decision making and choices Now, in America - you get what you pay for and you never subsidize others bad choices. If you don't smoke, your insurance premiums are lower. When demand for healthcare exceeds supply, all start receiving subpar healthcare as evidentially is happening across EU. Healthcare demand is increasing due to aging population and tax revenues are falling as many industries have moved or are in the process of moving to America or China. Anyone reading this can figure out how faulty the whole EU premise is based on. Universal healthcare etc.. is imposed by EU Instead of Romania would have followed the American model, it would have progressed much better than the resource exploitation which is happening right now because of EU.
- vr46 8y agoRode across Romania from Hungary to ride The Transfăgărășan Highway and if I never go back to Romania it'll be too soon. The roads were HIDEOUS. The Transfăgărășan was pretty awesome though.
- bad_user 8y agoTransfăgărășan isn't a highway and nowadays it's only a tourist destination, but yes, we've got terrible roads.
- vr46 8y agoIt is pretty stunning, though, and we didn't regret the journey one bit.
- wastedhours 8y agoJudging by the username, I can't imagine you had a great time on the roads as a biker, but don't write the country off on other merits. There's scenery more stunning than Balea Lac all over, and the food is on-point (plus, comparatively cheap).
- vr46 8y agoIt was more than worth it, I am happy to say, but we didn't have the greatest experience overall in Romania, but it was very enlightening and interesting, very interesting indeed. I was amazed to see so many people still with a horse and cart, then BMW X6s come past. The difference between rich and poor was vast for an EU country. I came away thinking how hard the EU's job was to reconcile countries as far away as Romania and the UK, both geographically and culturally, and whether it was even possible. I was also told that the region of Romania has been punished by governments for various uprisings and protests. Shamefully, I have not dug down much further into these stories, but I am reminded to now.
- niftich 8y agoHe's fed up and so are lots of people rallied behind him, because the problem is that bad. The Romanian road network is deficient and overburdened. Aside from commuters stuck in traffic, there's also lots of trucks. Most roads are undivided and overtaking is allowed. Safety culture among drivers is poor, deaths are high [1]. Sadly, road fatality rates in non-EU countries in the same region are even higher. The EU is a critical source of funding for major infrastructure projects, especially for newer members who also have access to convergence funds. Road projects are expensive not only because of costs in design, land acquisition, and construction materials, but because they require large amounts of labor over several years. While it's often the same multinational consortia who bid on and win such construction projects, these firms aren't set up to do everything by themselves, and partner with local subcontractors for much of the work. The way work gets subcontracted makes this process vulnerable to corruption and graft. But sometimes it's the big consortia that get themselves into a problematic situation: just read up on Bechtel and Viaduct at Suplacu de Barcău. EU transport and convergence funds might be a big help, but they do come with a few strings attached: they have to be used for projects that can be justified though a regional or EU-wide lens. On top of the slow pace of progress on the matter, Moldavia has an unfortunate geographic situation that puts it far away from the most important transit corridors -- the TEN-T corridors -- that EU desires to prioritize. In Romania's case, this means that connections towards Hungary and Bulgaria have so far made more progress than connections towards Ukraine and Moldova. [1] https://www.euronews.com/2018/12/07/which-countries-in-europe-have-the-deadliest-roads https://www.euronews.com/2018/12/07/which-countries-in-europ...
- madaxe_again 8y agoMoldova was an eye-opener (in 2012) - crossed the border from Romania at Giurgiulești, and almost immediately found myself driving down a cobbled road with gas street lights, and horse-carts. They make Romania look extremely wealthy. It’s understandable that the EU is prioritising corridor connections between member states and wealthy trading partners. I am sure Moldova will not be forgotten, but as long as they still have the last vestige of the USSR within their borders (Transnistria), it’ll be hard to extend them membership or the benefits of new infrastructure. Furthermore, extending east from Moldova into Ukraine is also challenging, as there is an awkward area of disputed territory around the border with frequent checkpoints, diversions, and razor wire fences. Oh, actually, that was seemingly resolved after my visit - but Transnistria remains.
- punnerud 8y agoIn Norway they have reduced the width of several roads to extend with one lane more, this way they get more mileage of highway. The downside is that they have to reduce the speed, and this is on roads that never have problems with congestion. So there is no reason to extend the roads or reduce the speed.. “You get what you measure.”
- moron4hire 8y agoI've considered doing something like this in my own city. Northern Virginia counties and cities routinely get listed as some of the richest in the country, often top 5 or top 10. Yet basic municipal services like roads and schools are in shambles. It's ludicrous to think that we can't fund basic infrastructure, in a town with property taxes on personal vehicles. We are a DC bedroom community, with some of the highest property values in the country, the likes of which rival or sometimes even top Silicon Valley. Yet somehow, even with a Democrat majority in our city and state legislatures, we can't fund shit.
- n-exploit 8y agoAmerica likes to hyper-focus on individual, not collective wealth. The American dream is centered around this idea that every individual has the right to their own castle.
- jessaustin 8y agoI don't know about the schools, but my impression of NoVA, from spending time there occasionally over the last two decades, is not that it needs more roads...
- moron4hire 8y agoThat's correct. There isn't anywhere to build new roads, anyway. But the roads we do have, especially in town, are very potholed. To the point that it is causing damage to cars.
- gist 8y agoIn the US part of the reason for the Interstate system is for defense purposes. I believe that height of bridges somehow relates to what is needed for missiles to travel underneath. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/brainiacs/eisenhowerinterstate.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/brainiacs/eisenhowerinte... https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/50vertical.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/50vertical.cfm
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dmode 8y agoInteresting stat in the article that Spain has orders of magnitude more motorways than UK or even Germany, while having a lower population. Any insight on why that is the case ?
- baybal2 8y agoFood for thought: https://youtube.com/watch?v=4-XDxCb92X4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=4-XDxCb92X4
- petre 8y agoAccess to EU funds when the EU was still young and everything was cool. They also have private motorways.
- benj111 8y agoThe UKs last big road building splurge was in the 90s and hit major resistance from environmentalists etc. So that build out never really finished. Plus geographically the UK is quite concentrated down in the south east. So you don't need vast lengths of motorway to reach the extremities. I'm less knowledgeable about Spain, but I know they've had a massive building boom in the early 2000s, was it part of that? Plus you have populations on all 4 sides of the Iberian 'square', so you do have to build long roads to connect them all.
- CydeWeys 8y agoHuh? Spain definitely does not have orders of magnitude more motorways. It has only slightly more than Germany and France, and a little less than 4X more than the UK. A lot of this is explainable by differences in size; Spain also has over double the land area of the UK. And keep in mind that "motorway" is specifically referring to what we would call interstate highway spec in the US. There's plenty of high quality roads that don't meet this spec that nevertheless would get you where you need to go quickly. In the US we have state routes and similar, and the UK has their own thing.
- wastedhours 8y agoA lot of the narrative around it had Spain spending heavily on infrastructure before the 2008 crisis - with large proportion of that on roads. Judging by the quality and modernity of them all when I've been there, I'm tempted to believe it.
- YeahSureWhyNot 8y agosomething is telling me there is going to be a lot of alleged construction work being carried out in front of his businesses for the next months to come blocking the traffic to his businesses
- MagicPropmaker 8y agoMy maternal grandfather was very happy to leave Romania, after his family had been there, as near as we can tell, about 600 years, pushed east over the years after coming up from the Mediterranean. In 1923 Here's a song he used to like to sing that sarcastically reminisces about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3ljx1roqto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3ljx1roqto
- nwah1 8y agoI can understand why Romanians would be upset, feeling that they are "behind." Their roadways may feel crowded and unsafe, but if the roadways were improved that would just encourage much more traffic and congestion. And all the other attendant problems, like pollution, public debt burdens, private debt burdens, accidents, sprawl, atomization, and an ugly (sub)urban monoculture. On the other hand, with enough vision and willpower their lack of roadways could be an opportunity to create a development model that is not so dependent upon car infrastructure. They could devise tax policies, zoning, and regulations that promote walkable communities. They could build out light rail, or Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) for intra-urban travel. And high speed rail for longer distances. Cars aren't all they are cracked up to be. Don't just copy everyone else. Learn from their mistakes.
- ekianjo 8y agoIf you cant gather political will to build roads, then you can imagine the immense obstacle it would be to bring high speed trains on the table. Consider that there is no country in the world that has good train network without having good road network. Its intertwined.
- nwah1 8y agoSolving the collective action problem is a universal issue that is much bigger than the roads issue, and I agree that this is the main issue. But, were it to be solved, that wouldn't necessarily mean going down the same path of every other nation. Some modern societies, like Denmark, have moved towards a less car-centric model, and it has worked. And just because prior societies that have developed high speed rail have done so after developing cars, that doesn't mean everyone else must do so in that order. The concept of leapfrog development is that developing nations can save all the expense and trouble of intermediate solutions and skip right to the good solutions. Cars are a failed god.
- ams6110 8y agoDenmark has good roads throughout the country.
- Ericson2314 8y agoI spend enough of my life pining for better public transit that it's hard to be sympathetic here. If you have such a "blank slate" and can noepay for better infrastructure, don't fuck it up like the US!
- raducu 8y agoIt only a blank slate on the surface. What happens is there's huge corruption and incompetence in the local and central administration which means bad planning, huge cost overruns, refusing to use E.U. funds because those imply higher scrutiny, and bad execution. Also corrupt officials who have inside information buy land that will be crossed by infrastructure then delay it with lawsuits and astronomical prices for the land that has to be expropriated.
- tschellenbach 8y agoInteresting fact about Romania is that the population is rapidly shrinking in size (due to emigration). Lot of people are fed up with the status quo.
- HNLurker2 8y agoMy best game theory choice is to get out ASAP and maybe comeback when wealthy?!
- bad_user 8y agoI'm Romanian and I haven't left. This phenomenon is natural for countries relatively poor compared with their neighbors, but if the quality of life improves there's always a plateau. Other European countries that are now considered to be well developed by us, like Ireland, went through the same process. Also the Romanians that are leaving still have family here and many send money home or have plans for returning later. Because as a matter of fact, buying a villa in Romania in a nice area is much cheaper and actually achievable, compared with any of the western countries, where it is next to impossible without winning the lottery. Or in other words, Romania is a nice country to retire to, if you have some money. Also between you and me, if I were to choose between Romania and the US, I'd choose Romania any day of the week, because I actually have a nice life here, whereas in the US you can always end up on the street, with no safety net and your children forever condemned by not being able to attend an Ivy league university. I think Romania made great progress since the '90s. The problem is this wave of populism that allowed PSD, our ruling party, to start destroying the great progress that we've made. And if nothing changes at the next elections, I think we are doomed. However the wave of populism isn't unique to Romania. Notice UK's Brexit, notice US's Trump, notice the far right rising in Europe. Our situation is not at all dissimilar to what is happening in Hungary or in Poland. But it too will pass. All we need is another economic crisis, because populists spend other people's money and at some point whatever source they have will dry out, at which point the government will be taken over by people that are actually competent. I just hope that this happens before it's too late.
- ai_ia 8y agoWhat's the state of art road building tech available now? I know that buildings can be made in a fortnight. Does similar tech is available for building roads which hopefully last?
- mberning 8y agoBased on what I have read recently on HN this surely means that Romania is a veritable paradise where automobiles are rarely seen or heard and people happily commute everywhere on foot, bicycle, and mass transit.
- black-tea 8y agoBuilding roads is a never ending battle. Notice how half the comments in here are people complaining about UK roads. I wish some countries would see this and just stop it. Invest in the railways.
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoThe funny thing is the UK had a good rail network but threw it away at the behest of the road lobby. The transport minister at the time (Earnest Marples) owned a road construction company.
- mnm1 8y agoDriving or riding in a car in Romania is often a harrowing experience. Many cars don't have seat belts or they are intentionally disabled, especially in the back. This includes taxis. Most people don't wear them. Drivers are often angry as it's generally a very uptight culture in general. The fatality rates reflect this. The culture needs changing. I want Romania to get more roads, but it will likely be at a preventable cost of many lives.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]