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According 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)
by iso1337 8y ago
According 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)
- dang 8y agoNationalistic flamewar is not allowed on Hacker News. Please don't do this again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: we've had to warn you about this before. Continuing will eventually get your account banned, so please stop.
- 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.