Bucharest Traffic Report:
It took me 30 minutes today travel down the main boulevard in the city centre today, reminding me not only of getting stuck in Washington DC rush hour traffic (a story which I must soon relate to you), but giving me time to think: “If traffic is this bad now, when the roads are in great condition (recently resurfaced), how bad is it going to be when the real winter snow falls, and the roads are 10cm deep in compacted ice?! *cringe*
Recent roadworks in the capital have been a mixed blessing. It’s great that some of the busier roads are nice and smooth again, free of cracks, potholes, and protruding manholes. I can’t say much for the maintenance done on the tram tracks though. In many areas, the tracks have now been raised 15cm above the ground, and are separated from autovehicle traffic by a guard railing. The problem with this is that previously, the tram track area of the road was a space where traffic could bleed onto and provide an extra lane in a sense. This didn’t really interfere with the trams, because everyone knows to give way to the speeding communist era behemonths. Now, however, it’s as if you’ve cut down three lanes to two in some places, but in most cases you’re really down to one from two.
Bucharest has fairly decent public transport systems, the subways, bus routes, and trams all work reasonably well, and everyone uses them. Nevertheless, the number of cars on the roads in the city seems to grow by the hour. A huge number of people pour into the city from the surrounding counties every day, not just commuters, but countless numbers of farmers carrying their goods to markets, as well as convoys of trucks bringing in consumers goods from Germany, Hungary, the UK, and France.
The city’s civil planning is quite poor on the whole, whether it’s the central hot water distribution system that isn’t working, or the abscence of storm sewer drains and the consequent flooding of streets and boulevards when it rains, there is always something pushing the system to the breaking point. Unlike most of the other problems, however, low traffic capacity is one thing that just can’t be re-engineered.
