You 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.
It'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.
Investing 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/
> 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
Romania 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)
When comparing to the UK does it take into account that some A roads are pretty good and are almost motorways in sections, they just won’t have a hard shoulder. Comparing “fast roads” might show a bigger difference between UK and Romania.
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.
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 :-)
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.
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
It used to be very low in the 90's when it fell from numbers comparable to today's, but the old ones were based on fake, communist numbers.
We were very poor until 1945, close to Third World poor, we still had famines until then. Then the communists helped us industrialize a bit, but then refused the Marshall Plan.
Then from 1963 to 1989 we had a Kim/Mao wannabe dictator building heavy industry and paying external debts while people were starving.
We also sold - literally - our German and Jewish communities to their home countries. About 1 million people out of 23 at the time.
So a combo of uneducated populace, Soviet control, communists headhunting elites (again, literally). We're trying to build something now but these things take decades if not centuries.
Wiki "The economy grew between the 1950s and 1970s at one of the fastest rates in the world, changing Romania from a predominantly agricultural country into an industrialized country. Almost 30% of the population moved during this period from rural to urban areas to work in the newly-built factories."
You "Then from 1963 to 1989 we had a Kim/Mao wannabe dictator building heavy industry and paying external debts while people were starving."
Not defending him, but what I found interesting is that it is the only country that comes to my mind that actually paid its debts off without defaulting:
> Wiki "The economy grew between the 1950s and 1970s at one of the fastest rates in the world, changing Romania from a predominantly agricultural country into an industrialized country. Almost 30% of the population moved during this period from rural to urban areas to work in the newly-built factories."
Yup, they did do a few things well. Free primary and secondary school education, giving women access to jobs, increased urbanization, etc.
But you have to keep on thing in mind: this was communist planning and reporting. We even have jokes about it. Stuff like the production being reported as having grown 10x in one year and then people having to bring stuff from home (from last year's harvest) when being asked to hand over this year's production.
Plus, they changed the country from 90% rural and agricultural to 60%. Even in 2000 45% of the population was still working in agriculture. If you compare their results with same-period Western bloc countries, Romanian gains were lower and shorter term ones.
> Not defending him, but what I found interesting is that it is the only country that comes to my mind that actually paid its debts off without defaulting
Well, it was interesting, but it was at the cost of turning us into an autarky. You know who is/strives to be another one? North Korea. Do you know how Ceaușescu got the idea? In North Korea, after a state visit. He wanted to turn Romania into one of the world's poorest states, just so people would shower him with flowers at yearly events...
And regarding our growth numbers ("between the 1950s and 1970s"), guess when Ceaușescu visited North Korea... 1971 ;)
I don't think you understand debt enough to understand how unlikely it is that a country pays off its debt. You can debate if it is good or bad to pay off the debt but it is definitely unusual without a jubilee.
I wasn't even questioning the debt, but the price Romanian people paid and more generally looking at him as some kind of "difficult guy, but fair" when in fact he was a ruthless dictator who lived like a king and though he was a God, just like any dictator or person with too much power.
That's like saying "Say what you will about Hitler, but he built some damn good highways.."
I live in Portugal, trust me, I know a thing or 2 about national debt..
The 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...
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).
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...