
An entrepreneur has built a one-metre-long stretch of motorway in Romania - Happy4000
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47582694
======
niftich
He'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-
europ...](https://www.euronews.com/2018/12/07/which-countries-in-europe-have-
the-deadliest-roads)

~~~
madaxe_again
Moldova 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.

~~~
bbrian
Wow, I'd never heard of Transnistria. Fascinating.

Transnistria: A land in limbo: CNN: 3m 22s:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAReDKkT9TA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAReDKkT9TA)

Transnistrian Independence Day 2017: A travel blogger who doesn't over-do it
with commentary: 3m 9s:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q28ZONQIHK0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q28ZONQIHK0)

It has its own "borders, police, military and currency"!: Another travel
blogger, well narrated and short: 8m 15s:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m-9Q5CkEvE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m-9Q5CkEvE)

~~~
alxlaz
I have a friend who visited it and came back with one of the funniest post-
Cold War stories I know. It's representative enough of this stuff that I'm
going to recount it, even though most of its value resides simply in being
funny.

So my friend is a very nice and friendly guy, who travels all over the world.
He speaks Romanian well, but not too much Russian. The border checkpoint,
naturally, was manned only by a few friendly folks who spoke nothing but
Russian.

He shows them his papers, and they manage to understand each other only to the
extent that he explains he wants to visit Tiraspol, and that he's a tourist.
All of this mostly in sign language.

So this guy apologizes, tells my friend to wait, and goes off through a door
in the back. Almost an hour later, he returns with someone who speaks a little
Romanian. My friends explains the whole I wanna visit Tiraspol, I'm a tourist
thing all over again. More discussion and paper checking ensues.

Another hour later, the two guys leave again, and return with a third soldier.
This time, someone who speaks excellent Romanian. The whole explanation gets
repeated. They finally give him the visa, wish him good luck and safe journey
-- and one of guys pats him on his shoulder and apologizes.

Sorry, man, he says, you look like a nice guy and I'm sure you really are a
tourist. But you have to understand, when someone shows up at the border and
claims they're a tourist, we usually find out he's definitely not a tourist.

Edit: every other event of his trip was equally funny, except it involved no
public authorities :). From what I've heard, Tiraspol isn't too bad a city --
but do remember this is basically still a Soviet state. I'm sure it's very bad
if you piss of the wrong person.

~~~
madaxe_again
Yeah, that was my experience going in too - took about six hours at the border
to get two cars through - and if it hadn’t been for my wife who speaks fluent
Russian, it would’ve been no dice.

Tiraspol feels like many post-soviet cities, and reminded me of Volgograd -
the only real difference is the ubiquitous and contemporary soviet imagery.

~~~
rurban
You reasly need to bring presents. Otherwise you could wait hours.

Interestingly the same descriptions of Moldova today I experienced when I
visited Romania in the late 90ies.

~~~
madaxe_again
Oh, we did - had a box full of pot noodles, and various Union Jack branded tat
- you’d be amazed at how far a touristy biro and tiny tin of biscuits will get
you.

On the other hand, it sucks when you’ve spent six hours buttering up an entire
border station, and then the shift changes, as happened when trying to get
into Uzbekistan just after a bombing in Tashkent. Ended up having to sleep in
a brothel in a Kazakh border town, as the border was truly closed, and after
30 hours of wakefulness we were ready to drop - and the nearest hotel was in
Shymkent.

Travel is great.

------
afarrell
This 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
They 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
> 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
The 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.

------
iso1337
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_ne...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_road_network_size)

~~~
oblio
Does 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 ;)

~~~
YawningAngel
We have motorways that go to every major city, why on earth wouldn't we?

~~~
chrisseaton
There 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
As 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 :-)

~~~
GordonS
Aberdonian here. Not sure about the A92, but the A90 between Aberdeen and
Dundee does carry enough traffic to warrant a motorway, and really needs to
lose the unsafe junctions, tractors and cyclists. The state of the dual
carriageway has been atrocious for 10+ years (at times dangerously so).

Also, the A96 between Aberdeen and Inverness is still not even dualled,
something that has been slated for decades, and will likely come as no
surprise to you.

Something that perhaps will come as a surprise is that Aberdeen now has a
bypass. The Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route (AWPR) was finally opened
recently - although after something like a decade and incredible costs.

~~~
smcl
Oops I mixed up the A92 and A90. But that's interesting, and I figured
Aberdeen-Inverness would likely be mostly single carriageway. I also remember
A9 from Inverness to the south being a bit hairy at times

------
tudorconstantin
This 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
And 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.

------
vr46
Rode 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.

~~~
wastedhours
Judging 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
It 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.

------
moron4hire
I'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.

~~~
jessaustin
I 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
That'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
In 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/eisenhowerinte...](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/brainiacs/eisenhowerinterstate.cfm)

[https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/50vertical.cfm](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/50vertical.cfm)

------
dmode
Interesting 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 ?

~~~
CydeWeys
Huh? 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.

------
MagicPropmaker
My 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)

------
black-tea
Building 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
The 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.

------
tschellenbach
Interesting 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.

~~~
bad_user
I'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.

------
mnm1
Driving 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.

------
ai_ia
What'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?

------
punnerud
In 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.”

------
YeahSureWhyNot
something 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

------
Ericson2314
I 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
It 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.

------
mberning
Based 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.

------
nwah1
I 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
If 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
Solving 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.

~~~
cbg0
To use your example: Denmark is not really a huge country, Romania has 5 times
the surface area and ~4 times as many people, not to mention the huge economic
difference between the two. It's much easier to focus less on cars and build
high speed rail when you are a smaller and richer country.

> Cars are a failed god.

This is a hyperbole, people still want to own cars and have the comfort of
leaving home whenever they wish and going directly wherever they want to go
instead of exchanging buses and trains as well as waiting in between these in
order to get from one place to the other.

Specifically for Romania, though I'm sure this is true in other places as
well, public transportation inside cities needs to be nailed down before
looking at things like high speed rail systems - companies have an interest in
their employees getting to work on time, the state would spend less on
healthcare if the cities were less polluted, and people would rather wake up a
bit later in the morning.

I believe that in the future we'll still see roads being developed alongside
rail and high speed rail or other solutions, regardless of how many people
think roads are a failing concept.

------
yeahitslikethat
From 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
WTF? 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
So if I understand it correctly, the railways need improvement?

I'd put the effort there, mass transit is much more sensible than cars.

~~~
oblio
Dude, 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.

~~~
hedora
This sounds just like California-style transit planning: they have a road
network that’s so screwed up you can measure the economic drag, and laughably
slow / disfunctional trains.

The article estimates the problem is only a 2% drain on the Romanian economy.

The SF Bay Area economy is surely burning more than 2% due to multi-hour
commutes, distorted property values, lack of non-tech workers to support basic
infrastructure (like schools and fire stations) etc, etc.

~~~
adventured
To keep things in perspective, California has a GDP per capita of $74,000.
There are only two nations that can compare to that: Norway and Switzerland.
It's nearly 100% higher than France, the UK and Japan.

Romania's GDP per capita is ~$10,700. They've made great strides in building
up their economy in the past two decades. Their 21% GDP growth since 2007 is
among the best in Europe. Per capita they rank above Mexico, Brazil, Turkey,
China and will pass Russia this year or next.

California's problems aren't due to lack of income or economic output to tax,
and it can afford a bit of drag on its economy from mediocre roads given the
extraordinary output levels in question (which isn't to say CA shouldn't fix
its terrible roads). California is a case of mismanagement of riches over
decades, which isn't a position that Romania has (yet) found itself in.

~~~
HNLurker2
>Their 21% GDP growth since 2007 is among the best in Europe. Per capita they
rank above Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, China and will pass Russia this year or
next.

Can you elaborate. AFAIK after privatization in '89 (fall of the communist
party) we kind lost a lot of industry in metallurgy, marble extraction (got
owned by big guys) etc..

