A few comments. The Transfagarasan is not a highway, it's a national road. Most of the bad roads in Romania are inside cities and local roads (county and communal roads). The problem with the national roads is not that they are bad, it's that they go through and not around villages and towns. So you have a lot of portions where you should be driving 50kph. The new highways will not be upgrades of existing roads, they are build from scratch and this involves a lot of expenses for figuring out the path they should fallow and also expropriations. Regarding trains, we didn't canceled them, the small routes were sold to private companies. And there have been a lot of investment into the main lines, replacing tracks, electrification, etc. There are portions where trains now reach the 160 kph speed limit, something that was unhered of a few years ago.
Not like most drivers would care about top speeds, they are just for losers in their heads :))) Also, canceled is the right word (as in internet meaning, not literally make them cease to exist). Yes, there are investments, and I am happy about it, but there have been so many budget cuts that make these investments not materialize. The priority right now seems to be mostly the TEN-T network, while other regional rails are mostly neglect. Also, there are a lot of controversial decisions are made from time to time, that affect the rail travel, or people's subjective view of it, the latest of it being the extension to the time required until a repair can take place on the rolling stock. Not to mention the service on board, which is sometimes lacking, compared to other countries.
@@sebastianr1204 British vs American English. Highway in yanks is motorway in kings. Chillax bro, Vlad is right. And the author of the video is biased, and also called Clarkson's show "Top Gun" :)
@@iurievlasov4869 Nope. You confound it as well. What you call Autostrada in Romanian is Motorway in British and interstate in American. Transfagarasan is a highway.
Very well made. Correct info, btw. And to answer your question, as a Romanian I actually believe it's a huge mistake to leave our railroads in dismay, cause it's already there, ready to be used, unlike our highways.
Yes yes yes go repair the railroads!!! It's such an obvious move also for EU, and even if the costs quadruple and half of it lands in corrupt hands, it'd still be a positive investment for Romania and Europe as a whole! Every foreigner in Romania can see that! Go Romania! Go Romanian rail!
you built kilometers of highway more easily and BG might have an upper hand on that, but the rest of the network is indeed in some places worse than RO (e.g. Ruse -> Stara Zagora -> Haskovo->Kardjali)
As a Romanian I really appreciate the focus. However, some topics need to be better explained for context. 1. Investment is also present in Railways, some parts are better than others. Overall, it has been neglected, progress here is at a snail's pace however it is present. 2. Investing in Highways is a must. It should not be done by excluding the railways, true, but the entire system is awfully behind other European countries. 3. Bucharest's A0 ring, in my opinion is poorly presented. As the entire ring is split into 2 main sectors: North with 4 sub-sectors and South with 3 sub-sectors. 2/3 Sub-sectors for the South have a very big chance of being finished late this year, with the 3rd hopefully next year. In the North, the mentioned Chinese company only has 1/4 sub-sectors. The news around that, is true, but it only applies to 1/7 sub-sectors for the entire A0. Also, for the North another sub-sector is behind. The other 2 are contracted. So while it is annoying (and in fairness related to incompetence and corruption) only 2/7 sub-sectors are falling behind. 4. All contracts are signed for the 1st pass across the Carpathian mountains (part of A1). There is optimism there, with sections being finished during 2026-2028, a fair time-frame considering the complexity. 5. A7- That will link Moldova to the capital, is in a good place, and most of the 440km should be finished around 2025-2026, the local sub-contractor(which started work on 10/13 sub-sectors) has a very good reputation for efficiency an quality with other works they have already delivered. 6. The price/km for a Highway is indeed too high, regardless of the complexity of any specific project, this is indeed solely related to a very high corruption within the country. Sources: www.proinfrastructura.ro/proiecteinfrastructura.html#map=7/45.924/25.829 -- for Railways (marked with CF in the legend) and roads 130km.ro/harta.html 130km.ro/autostrazi.html -- only for Highways Both these sources are unrelated to the Government and are ran by infrastructure-passionate people with a long track-record of keeping an eye on things.
@@alexverdigris9939 they are investing in the main european coridors for now. Most importantly linking the port of Constanta with the rest of Europe. for example here is a video of works being done on the Rhine-Danube corridor ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-0tfgMHQqU5s.html
@@yogun2302 You could swap it around and make an equally true statement: *Investing in railways is a must. It should not be done by excluding the highways, true, but the entire system is awfully behind other European countries.* The two are interchangeable, unless you think they aren't. If they are intercheangeable, then your entire "point 2" becomes moot. If they aren't, then you ought to explain why not.
I travelled to Romania by train last august, and basically every train station and every km of railway was under construction. The trains even become fast in the north-west, where the tracks were already replaced. Romanian train operators were far nicer than Hungarian operators, they even cocked a vegetarian breakfast for me that was not on the menu, and they did not try to extort money from us, unlike their colleagues in Hungary. I was pleasantly surprised by everything except the toilets.
as a Hungarian this is sad to read but i can totally imagine it being true :/ I am still really hoping Hungarian infrastructure will get better soon but i think its not going to. On the contrary the countries around Hungary are soon going to overtake us in every matter its very sad to face it.
@@enadizenideniz I loved Hungary in 2005, so much potential, all the beautiful old building, the location in Europe, but last year Hungary was pretty sad. The city center of Budapest had walled off shop windows and money was wasted on prestige project instead of infrastructure. Rebuilding all the old palaces before having good, clean and busy streets is a waste of money. All that potential wasted. The houses in the center of Budapest could be worth much more by now had Hungary developed like Poland. I had some sympathies for Orban before my visit, but he wasted too much potential to act like a good, benevolent president. You guys went from first place in Eastern Europe, when he was elected, to last place in Eastern Europe today. Even Slovakian and Rumanian infrastructure is now better than yours. Hungary shouldn't be closer to Slovakia and Romania in infrastructure and capital terms than to Czechia and Poland.
@@enadizenideniz I'm half hungarian, half romanian. Last time I drove with my dad through Hungary we stopped at a gas station on the highway to get some food. I ordered in English because my hungarian is really bad. The ladies at the counter scammed us of one sausage. I shit you not, one sausage. They added three euros more to the bill. Of course my father intervened since he speaks the language and an awkward situation ensued. I don't know much else about Hungary, so I'm not going to draw any conclusions here. Just thought my personal experience with customer service in this particular situation might fit in here.
@@me5ng3 Yeah same for me at a shop in Budapest. I am Romanian my future wife is Hungarian from Romania and we were with an American friend. Speaking english. And in a fucking mall in the center of fucking Budapest, the saleswoman CHANGED the price. I mean with a fucking pen. In the E.U. In the 21st century. In Romania she would have been lynched by an angry mob for doing that :))) And my girlfriend threatened to call the police, in Hungarian. We barely manage to get the correct price and only after she dialed the police number. Hungary under Orban has turned into a shithole
Romanian here, I love trains, and I try to use them as much as possible, however i think we badly need both a highway and a railway network, sadly the railway is getting less atention
Hopefully V. Putin gives us more oil to travel with cars if we stab Ukraine in the back. Considering Romania imports 70% of its crude oil consumption, this seems like the path to follow...
@@hughmungus5529 mai multe autostrăzi spre slăvirea mai-marelui tovarăș fondator al Uniunii Economice Eurasiatice, tovarășul doctor inginer de renume international, VV. Pootin
@@hughmungus5529 but it's true that Romania (that only corrupt country in the world, there is no corruption anywhere else🤣😂), imports 70% of the crude. Actually it's even worse, it cannot refine enough diesel fuel so it is a net importer of diesel fuel because we sold Petromidia to Kazakhstan and Petrotel refinery to LUKOIL. Good luck guys! You will remember this as the golden age!
As a Bulgarian I think the story that you outlined is quite similar. Corruption, expensive highways that seem to kill every week, oversaturation of cities by cars and falling railways. How did you produce the animations? Very insightful.
România is not still one of the poorest countries in Europe, but EU. Is a difference. There are many european countries poorer than România, at least 10.
Romania is actually one of the richest by GDP, and it is booming. It is expected to become one of the top ten richest in Europe by 2040. They are already the richest in all of south eastern Europe by gdp and only Croatia and Greece have a slightly higher gdp per Capita but Romania will soon surpass them in gdp per Capita too. For the first time in history Bucharest has a higher gdp per Capita than Budapest and will surpass Hungary in gdp per Capita in the next 4-5 years.
@@WEMBLEYNE No the UK, France, Germany, and the other Western European countries are a hot mess full of refugees from Africa and the Middle East that stab people, set cities on fire, do suicide bombings, and grape women. They have lost their countries, in certain parts if Paris women can't walk alone without a male chaperone because the refugees there made Sharia law like in Afghanistan! At least Romania is still 99% Romanian and Christian and they fly their flag everywhere unlike in Western European countries, so they clearly still have their pride. Only place I've seen as many flags everywhere is in America so Romanians are very patriotic.
As a Romanian which is pro Rail, I agree that we need Highways, but the Rail is very important as well. It is a mass transit oportunity machine which needs more investing in.
The only healthy way of building and managing railways is by the private sector as the government is and will be extremely corrupt. Nowhere in the world is railways profitable while managed by the state.
As a Romanian I can say that I am upset by the state in which our rail network finds itself in. Besides being slow, transportation services are inconsistent. Once I took a train from Timisoara to Cluj-Napoca, a 6 hour journey and the conditions of the train on that long route were worse than a much smaller route from Arad to Timisoara (around one hour). Another "excellent" experience was going form Bucharest to Cluj for 8 hours starting in the morning, without any heating inside the train in the middle of winter. This was also first class 🙄. We need highways, but we mustn't neglect trains. The lack of funding is a complex matter. Corruption and political instability contribute to it. But I need to mention how the country is organized. While Poland had an interest in regionalization, Romania stayed stuck to a centralized system. Poland has 16 voivodeships, whereas Romania has 41 counties, with a smaller population! And Poland prospered because of the change. I suspect that this is due to generational trauma associated with Transylvania. The area was contested in the past, and politicians use the Hungarian minority as a scape goat, to not change the system. Oh no, the Hungarians want autonomy, they "hate" us and want the land back. What will we do with them? 🥺 Regionalization will break the Romanian state! All of this while every county leader has a small voice and cannot properly collect taxes without the accord of Bucharest. Nevertheless take a stand against them. This leads to stagnation, and the spilling of tax-payers money into the pockets of corrupt elites.
And don't forget that in reality the Romanian and Hungarian elites work together in corrupting and stealing from the country. Romanian politicians say, that we hate the Romanians, while Hungarian politicians do nothing, but campaign, how we need "protection" from the system, while in reality, they are the system. All the while they literally lead the country together and generate hate amongst the public.
After reading your comment, your situation is not that different from my country. The only difference is that my country has twice the population than Romania, less railways, more mountains and it is much much bigger than Romania, Just to give you a reference it is like going from Bucharest to London. Greetings from Peru.
@@al_caponeh6185 yeah but we are in the EU so basically by 2023 a country beeing in the Eu should not be compared to a country from latin america , latin america is seen in europe as corupt and very dangerous
@@btrading4996 You're right, and in Romania the EU is already funding giant rail projects like the renovation of M200 who connects central Romania to Hungary or in coming years the renovation of Arad-Timisoara-Caransebes-Craiova..... and also of Cluj-Oradea-Hungarian border... And they are also funding the purchase of new trains who will be used in national rail lines in coming years.... so yeah even if the videos is right about the current state of the rail infrastructure, I'm very disapointed that it failed to mention all the current romanian rail projects and instead focussed on bashing the fact that highways are being built...
It's a shame there isn't a more balanced approach here - it would entail a fraction of the cost, raw materials, and environmental damage to revitalize the rail infrastructure. A basic road system is necessary, but involvement of EU funds should remediate such an ineffective plan based on zealous adherence to a dated planning model.
They are already funding giant rail renovation projects in Romania like M200 Curtici-Simeria-Brasov or Hungarian border-Oradea-Cluj or Arad-Timisoara-Caransebes then Carensebes-Craiova, and those are already EU funded giant projects, for M200 you can already see some project with most sections being at 80% completion so far. Also those are not just simple "renovations", they are actually rebuilding the whole infrastructure, in some places with new path and smoother curves, new bridges, new tunnels, those are really giant projects compared to what Romania got in the recent past... But for the rest yeah there's still a lot to be done.
It was one of Europe poorest countries, now its NOT still, it is not even in top 10, it is not even poorest in the EU, stop spreading stereotypes we are sick of them, further improve documentation next time when you decide to make a video about a country, because you will end up spreading negative and untrue facts helping strengthen the already negative stereotypes.
5:45 totally undocumented statement: "Most of Romania's highways were built during the 70s and 80s" Wrong, wrong, wrong!!!!! *From the total of 994 km, only 113 km (11,4%!!!!!) were built before the year 2000!*
As a Ukrainian that was forced to visit Romania a year ago I must say the roads weren't that bad. In fact they were pretty good - I was impressed by the mountain roads there. They do go right through the villages though (which was OK for me as I enjoyed the scenery). IDK if it is even possible to bypass them in the mountains and pave completely new paths in this difficult terrain. I also noticed there were a lot of railroads to cross, but rarely I had to stop there to wait for a train to pass. I guessed they were old and commissioned, some of them maybe even from imperial times.
romania has lots of small, dense villages, unlike what i've seen in ukraine. building bypasses isn't possible and most of the times not even needed. trains here don't run that frequent so a railway crossing is uninterrupted for 30-40 minutes at a time. you just got lucky to not see any trains :))
Nice video, but misleading in many ways. 1.TransFagarasan is not a highway. Its a one lane nation road. 2. We didn't ditch trains, after no work on them, now they are rebuild the old rail network back to 160 km/h speed. So in a few years most major cities (on specific routes) will have decent speed. 3. The roads are not that bad, they are actually pretty good, depends on what roads you drive, the frequently used ones are really good, better than Bulgaria or Hungary, as our roads are newer probably 5. About de A0 you are almost completely wrong. Only section 3 (out of 7 sections) of the northern part, 19% of it, was granted to the Chinese, while on the rest of it, they are working now, except on section 1 northen I don't think our government is ditching rail, but we are in a dire need of decent roads that don't cross every single fking village in Romania. We are very far behind in road infrastructure, and I think every country needs a decent, basic, highway infrastructure
As a motorcycle rider, I can tell you that "bad Romanian roads" is old news. Most of the roads are good nowadays, the only bad portions are in small cities where the funding goes perhaps in different direction. All the national roads are surprisingly good. I saw more bad roads in Bulgaria, but as a matter of fact they share a similar 'road', they improved immensely their roads network.
Honestly, we Bulgarians have been on the same branch as you guys since the start of time. Same problems with the Ottomans back then, same problems with Schengen, corruption and infrastructure today. Honestly, I don't know why Bulgaria and Romania despite so similar today don't have more open relations to each other. If the two work on the similar problems together, they can probably reach ever so far. Sometimes I wish our people were more like Hungarians and Polish, where they are so close.
@@cerebrummaximus3762 I totally agree. I always considered Bulgarians same people as Romanians. The only thing different is the language. We have more in common than differences.
I loved my visit to Romania a few years ago. Really the roads were as good or better than what I see in the USA..not sure if that's praise for Romania or condemnation of US infrastructure but there ya go.
Romania is about to double it's highway km from about 1000 to 2000 by 2030. Currently almost 600 km are under construction and 350 km to be tendered. It's a shame it took so long and it didn't started like 15 years sooner like this.
Singura varianta prin care noi chiar sa avem 2000 de km de autostrăzi in 2030 e cu presiuni masive din partea SUA și NATO mai ales. Altfel sa ne amintim ca in 95-96 ni se promitea ca in 3 ani vom circula pe autostrada Ploiești Brașov
@@alextomulescu4593nu vad ce treabă are SUA sau NATO care n-au în plan să ofere nici un ban. Mai degrabă EU ne-a dat un imbold mai ales că sunt șanse de la următorul exercițiu bugetar 2027+ să nu mai ofere bani pentru rutier ci doar feroviar și altele. Acum sunt 750 de km în execuție și vreo 200 km în licitație. Sunt șanse bune să fie finalizați în 6 ani. Politicienii ne sunt datori pentru inacțiunea lor mai ales în anii 2015-2018 când nu s-a făcut mai nimic.
A small correction - most highways were built after the communist era, except for Bucharest-Pitești all of them actually Also, as of late several railways are getting upgraded, and several sectors are worked on and getting electrified. Some of the more important mainline are being upgraded to 4 lines(from Arad to Bucharest I think is one of them)
I think that rail should get a lot more attention. We have so many cases, where there's a drastic difference between car and rail. For example, if you want to travel, from Sighisoara to Targu Mures (both of which have a train station), you can do it by car under 1 hour. If you take the train, it takes 5 to 8 hours and you even have to change trains. There's less than 50 kms between the two cities. If you want to go to Brad from Deva, it takes you 40 minutes by car, but 13 hours by train. Hunedoara, an important tourist destination, doesn't even have train service. This is because the system is full of dead ends. Instead of looking like a web, it's more like blood veins. And don't get me started on the delays, the state of the trains and stations (it feels like time travel) and their speed. I'm not trying to whine or trash the country, like many others do, I'm just saying that there are some real problems here.
@@kundbalint4091 I 100% agree with you and it's my firm belief that we shouldn't have spent all that money on highways and instead we should have built a very good railway network. I personally mostly take the train on sections of the Cluj to Bucharest line, and that's much better kept than most sectors, so I personally haven't really had that many bad experiences. But I know especially branch lines are pretty bad.
@@jach99 What really bothers me is that recently they have took out a lot of trains from Cluj (like Dacia). We're talking about a city full of university students, from all over Transylvania, and the country. Now we have a much harder time, when we use rail, as we only have half of the options, compared to autumn.
The work on the M200 is going very well, a modern entirely rebuilt rail infrastructure with new bridges, tunnels, etc... it took years of efforts but maybe next years you'll be able to go from Arad to Sighisoara on the most modern line in the country... they are currently working on Sighisoara-Brasov too, and they recently funded the work on Cluj-Oradea-Hungarian border and also Arad-Timisoara-Caransebes (after that Caransebes-Craiova).... So yeah the video is very disapointing on the fact that it failed to correctly talk about the ongoing giant rail projects in the country (and rather focused too much on the comparison with highways) but yeah the video is obviously overall pretty right about the poor shape of most of romanian rail infrastructure currently....
You're putting a spin to this story, probably so that you can cater to a specific audience. The result is then biased and incomplete. Western viewers may bate because they are used to having great road infrastructure and, at least in the US, have observed over investment in it. This is not the case at all in Romania. Historically it has been underinvested in. Specifically the communist regime made it a point to expand capacity of the rail infrastructure (not length, as you incorrectly state, the network was largely complete by WWII) and neglect road infrastructure. The reason was not care for community but it came naturally from the fact that most Romanians could not afford a car, hence traffic was not warranting big investments. So this is not going along the easy to swallow narrative of trains = community, cars = individual against community. As people's income started growing, car ownership grew and roads became congested. On the other hand, rail became less used. This is very similar to what happened in western countries from the 50s to the 70s. Rail lines were closed, highway infrastructure grew. To make the picture more complete: rail investments are happening on the main corridors to increase speed and capacity, and trains are being bought, so it's not the utter neglect that may be inferred from your story. Second, while the highway network has grown at a slow pace over the past 30 years, progress has been made in all areas: financing, procurement, corridor selection. And no, most of the current network was not in place in communist times, in fact the opposite is true. For someone who doesn't know much about Romanian transportation infrastructure, this video may seem to explain a lot, but it actually constructs a false image.
There is this great paper on the subject titled 'Romania’s Railway Development 1950-1989: Changing Priorities for Socialist Construction' which dives into how the Communist government expanded the rail network. Its what I base that claim upon. To summarize that paper, it says that Romania's communist government pushed for the mass adoption of rail, modernized the network and increased passenger and Freight numbers. That is the expansion I refer to. From what I gather from your comment, you mean the opening of new lines, and based on my research I would agree with you that the efforts to open new ones were more limited. Hope this clarifies! Cheers, Hugo
@@IntoEurope the major implication of how the communist regime invested in rail infrastructure (improving capacity by electrification, line-doubling, and rail stock, but essentially no new lines) is that civil engineering suffered a lack of expertise for decades. No new long tunnels were built for more than half a century for instance. This translated into reluctance on taking on big projects (the mountain crossings you mention for instance) even after communism fell. Only in the last few years are we seeing this changing, with the rail corridor from Arad to Brașov getting some major tunnels in construction at the moment, and the highway from Sibiu to Pitești starting work this year on the most difficult parts.
@Andy Ash nah, it isn't flawed. It doesn't get into much detail and it simplifies some aspects because that's just how you make high quality videos that are watchable and under 10 minutes. Nobody, but a Romanian, wants to watch 5 hours about how corrupt Romania is, and that video would still have some simplifications. His main reasons for the disaster of what Romanian transportation is are spot on, 1. Geography 2. Corruption 3. Also corruption, but from a different point of view. Although I would put geography the 3rd reason, not the top one.
@Andy Ash the only reason you can travel faster by car is exactly the lack of investment in railways. Many Romanians learned how to live like a westerner from Dallas tv show in the early 90s. There weren't many trains in that show. I don't care at all what is planned or under construction, and only few naive Romanians really believe everything politicians are lying about. Why isn't cadastre done? Why isn't Dan Șova sleeping in a tent on the highway as he promised to do if it's not done. Of course people prefer cars when even bikes are faster than Romanian trains. Don't believe me? Look up Romanian trains average speed. Hint it's 17kph in 2021. Yeah, sure, there were some minor investments, so "no investments" is indeed an approximation, but having had investments would be a gross exaggeration more akin to a shameless lie, considering that there's people using horses to travel, as they're also faster than trains. Obviously there's some lines that are half decent, but that really is irrelevant when talking about the network as a whole. As about who's the poorest I'm the EU, that's indeed Bulgaria and not Romania, but given how close they are to each other and how far they are to all the other countries (although Hungary seems to do its best to bridge the gap by getting poorer), you can easily consider Bulgaria and Romania equally poor and on the bottom position. Nuff said.
@andyash2225I was thinking the same. The fact that he said, people don't ride trains because it reminds them of communism blew my mind. I remember the 90s trains, they were literally barns on wheels, dirty, stinky and very slow. Today's trains are very modern and loads of people take the trains.
@andyash2225 Yep, that's what I was saying. And that's not even a fact, trains are packed all the time. People are travaling with the train all the time. I was just saying that he has some absurd information, not sure where he got it from.
You are not allowed to say that!!! Please tow the line: Romanians corupt, Romania all bad, until we make it all cheap and take it away from Romanians for penny on the dollar!!! When they will wake up it will be too late(mwahahahaaahh) and we will own everything!! 🤫🙋. So please tow the line and repeat the official script!!
The UK rail system is much more advanced and efficient. Sometimes the UK railway is a headache due to delays, cancellations, and high prices. The Romanian railway system is extensive and covers some incredible mountainous terrain If the tracks were improved and electrified, this train ride could become one of the most scenic in Europe. It's unfortunate that the Romanian government doesn't consider this a priority. The interests of individuals can have a significant impact on an entire nation, causing disruption.
To have some updates, right now there are already lots of highway plots under construction. For instance the one to Moldova has to be built in about 2.5 years and at least the most part, the one build by UMB (Romanian company) will be finished in time, they have already proven capable. If in the past corruption (Bechtel case for instance with the secretised contract) was a major headache, at the moment there is an agreement we need these projects done and earth is moving already at great pace. Actually pretty much every highway is, with little exceptions, moving fast (including the A0 you mentioned, where only one lot of 8.5 km was won by that Chinese company). And new projects appeared meanwhile. Romania's infrastructure will look a lot, lot different in a few years.
I laughed when I read about the Betchel scandal, but I'd turned dead serious soon after thinking about the amount of public money that had been wasted only to eventually get just a few kilometres of motorway.
Are you trying to make some kind of point by continuously using those drone shots of an African highway? Were you only getting videos of Nigerian road infrastructure when searching for "highway stock footage"?
Sad. Travelling Romania by train has been a wonderful experience. Yes, they are slow.. But they get (got?) you everywhere. And they where affordable to many people that will not be able to own a car.
Thanks for the positive take. I'm going to visit Romania and Bulgaria along the Danube with train in May. I plan to have plenty of time, and just need trains to bring me to the next town once a day.
@@eljanrimsa5843 trains arent that bad, yeah they are slow and from like the 60s but they get the job done. For example about 360km take ~6hr from my experience, the delays were 5min max.
The truth is that the economy of Romania has changed. In the communist era, there were large industrial hubs that produced large quantities of heavy goods that were transported in bulk and that were ideally suited for the railways. Nowadays there are thousands of smaller units that work on the just-in-time and delivered-to-gate business model with small-sized valuable products that are better suited for truck transportation. That is why the rail system is in disrepair: lack of earnings. Everywhere the freight pays for the network and the passenger service is subsidized by the state as nowhere it covers its costs. But in Romania, the government grants had to cover everything at once from a very small budget and that meant decline. In the last decade, things had shifted and with a healthier economy and sizeable financial help from the EU we can see more and more investment and more care going into the repair of the rail network and of the rolling stock.
As a Romanian, I love how well you understand and explain the current state and history of railway and road infrastructure, as well as the corruption in the country. My government has no problems building kilometers of highway every year, yet grossly neglects the less expensive to maintain rail network. My dream is of a world-class rail infrastructure in Romania, properly connected to other European cities.
We're getting there, just look at the renovation of M200 who's going fairly well or the soon to be launched renovation of Arad-Timisoara-Caransebes-Craiova or Oradea-Cluj.... of course there is still a lot of work and many many years to fix the mistakes of the past (not building or maintaining the rail network properly) but overal things are moving in the right direction... maybe next year you will be able to go from Sighisoara to Arad in an entire new completed rail line, fast and with modern comfort.... but yeah I recon there are a lot more to do than that, but the task is just so giant that even with an infinite amount of funding it could still take years to catch up....
@Andy Ash Romania needs to be taken away from Romanians because they are corrupt 🤣. Romanians are much better Channing toilets in the beautiful west! Remember: there is no corruption anywhere else in the world! 🤣🤣😜
@Andy Ash maestre, dacă ai ști cum sunt tratați românii la toate nivelurile în vest, ai rămâne șocat. Mulți nu deschid gura, de teamă să nu zică lumea că n-au făcut nimic.
Also in my country Poland govenments spend far more money on motorways construction than on railways. We have some 4900 km of motorways (a bigger network than in the UK and almost 1200 km more under construction) but many railway projects are delayed. At least the 630 km long Kraków-Warszawa-Gdańsk rail corridor is ready and trains can travel at 200 km/h. In the capital there is also under construction the new Warszawa West station, a project similar to Vienna's Hauptbahnhof, and in Łódź a railway tunnel for the future Warszawa-Poznań/Wrocław high speed line is being built. And people travel by train more often: in 2022 we had 342 million passengers. I hope also in Romania the situation will improve gradually !
The 200 kmph are only between Gdańsk and Warsaw, I believe. Also, procurement on high speed tunnel under Łódź hasn't ended yet. Only the conventional tunnel is being built. EDIT: I checked and there is also 200kmph between Warsaw and Katowice
You are totally wrong. Romania has more than decent road quality, but the Romanian drivers are the worst in the world. In general, in Romania there is no respect for the law. It's usual, than in a limit 50 km/h zone, drivers are speeding with 100-130 km/h. You could not reach 120 km/h inside the city if there were a lot of holes in the road, right? Indiscipline in traffic is the real reason behind the high mortality on road accidents. 😁
1:30 the Danube doesn't separate the distinct regions of Romania. Danube is literally the Romanian-Bulgarian border to the south, not inside Romania. Danube's tributaries forming borders inside Romania? Maybe.
@@adriantr.8040 Dobrudja isn't one of the "distinct regions of Romania" he highlighted. It was Transylvania, Moldova and Wallachia. And it separates like 95% of the country from the 5%, not really a major point to discuss imo.
6:55 Beautiful story, but *90% fake...* *Only 8,6 km from the total of 100,77 km* were tendered to a Chinese company (CCECC)... And fit your "beautiful" story... 75 km are already under construction, with more than 50 km very close to be finalized by the end of this year....
Hello! You got a lot of things right. I do, however, think it is in order to give a bit of nuance to what you presented. So, in no particular order, here it goes: 1. The railway system didn't decay only because of corruption and the focus on highways. The system itself was built around economic concepts which are no longer relevant (think moving lots of people to do agricultural work or to work in factories which, in the 90s weren't viable anymore). A lot of Romanias heavy industry collapsed alongside the eastern block and the agriculture became less labor intensive. The railway system, as it was, was simply not viable. Corruption / state driven inefficiencies made it worse, but i don't think it was the main problem. Currently, viable routes are being modernized and there is a decent improvement in the investement in new trains. Overall, we are talking billions invested in the railway system. 2. Romania couldn't afford to focus on highways until relatively recently. It is not true that most of the highways currently in exploatation where built a long time ago. In 90s and 00s it made sense for us to improve and upgrade our roads that were not access controlled but that we already had. For most needs, today those roads are not in as poor of a state as you portray them. Most of the potholes exist on rural roads. On the other hand, the safety features of a "national road" are not even close to what a controlled access road (in Romania, there are 3 standards for these types of roads, not just highways) provides. Combined with poor road discipline, this leads to the very high death rate. 3. Regarding the Chinese company debucle. First of all, the contract was never signed and it is still stuck in legal battles. The Ro gov would def prefer to cancel that procedure and start it anew, but a lot of the delay was also caused by the other companies which contested different moments of the procedure. 3. Building highways through the Carpathians is for sure very expensive and part of the reason for which the gov was indecisive about which route to prioritize. That, however, is just one thing which makes Ro highways really expensive. Besides linking Bucharest with the port of Constanta and the cities of Pitesti and Ploiesti (basically, linking Bucharest, the main economic engine to gas / petrol and global trade routes),which was relatively cheap, the highway project had to prioritize the sectors in Transylvania (creating routes to the west). And that is quite expensive as well as Transylvania is mostly hilly terain with really poor soil (as far as building stuff on it is concerned). 4. Romania accelerating the process of building highways is a certainty at this point in time. Currently, there are ~657 km of highways under construction. All of these should be done by 2028-2029 at the latest. There are contracts for another ~600 km in different stages of planification. Most of these will most probably be ready by 2035. Altogether this is a huge improvement over the last 20 years. It took a while to develope a decent market for building big infrastructure projects, but hey.. it happened. 5. The idea that Romania should switch from focusing on highways towards railways anytime soon is not really a thing, tbh. A comprehensive highway system is mandatory for a modern economy. Being a car centric society has no effect on this fact. The problems start when you begin to add endless number of lanes, not when you don't have a highway system at all and you build it. Despite all of the above, I think you did a pretty good job with the video, so thank you! ^^
Country needs both rails and roads. As someone from Poland that have the same dilemma in 90s I fully understand it. Over 30 years we built 70% of roads that we planed at cost of rail network. We maintained and made small upgrades only at main lines at a cost of closing less used. In previous year passenger train didn't stop in ~60-70 subprovinces ot of ~360. Romania is currently in the same state that needs to build both of them but can only one due to lack of funding. So probably only building one of them to at least 50% will allow for talks of upgrading second one from XIX century into XXI. But this needs to be over party unity that can be in many cases problematic.
I think Romania has chosen the wrong path by emphasizing road investments at the expense of railways. In recent years, we have done the opposite in Poland and a lot of people have switched to trains because they have become fast, comfortable and widely available. And trains are much cheaper and less polluting than cars.
Latvia has also started to increase it's spending on infrastructure, but unlike in Romania the railways are set as the backbone of the whole system. All the railway lines will be upgraded from 120 km/h to 140-160 km/h. In addition the high-speed railway network with speeds of 250 km/h.
If you are interested I think making a video, on how systemic corruption led to the Tempi accident in Greece, and how European monitoring failed to enforce institutional and structural reform, would fir with your content and benefit your audience! RIP to all the victims...
We also have projects for Railway Infrastructure ^^I use the Railway in Romania often and it helps me very much..by getting to the Sea or at the Mountains.
As I know some people from Romania, I know these people work hard. This is more like a political and corruption problem, as stated. In Poland in 2023 over 5000 km of fast roads are available, which means that it can be done. I keep my thumbs for the guys.
We didn’t abandoned our railways. Like the Highway project, we also have a railway project for speeds of 160km/h. The longest line will connect Arad (our western “city”) with Constanta (our city port at the Black Sea). But being Romania, this project is also slow. At the time of this comment you can travel by train with 160km/h (with some restrictions) from Curtici to Teius. (Which isn’t very far). And from Bucharest to Constanta. And i believe some routes/trains from Brasov - Bucharest.
160 km/h is the most basic speed in every other country before any new construction. 250 km/h is the lowest standard for high speed rail. Poland, the Baltics and Czechia are doing that speed. Western Europe goes for 320 km/h Don’t make the same mistake as Poland. They made a mistake of updating the main lines to 200 km/h a few years ago and now they have to go up to 250. Should’ve been 250 or 300 from the start
Brasov to Bucharest is mountain track. To go there 160km/h everywhere would need a base tunnel below the Carpathian Mountains, but the track is rather OK: >100 in the flat part and slower, but smooth in the mountains.
Just one comment, pottholes and such are virtually non existent, maybe on smaller more local roads, but rarely.. I travel a lot… at least in the region I live in (transilvanya), road quality is very good. I see no difference in quality per say with let’s say, Italy or Austria - if you do not take in account the lack of highways… that’s the big difference. I still don’t get why according to the EU we have the worst roads, cause we don’t. Just take a trip into Hungary and I am sure there are other examples
Let me paijnt you a picture as a romanian student who visited basically every station in the country for the past 6 years. There are 2 goals for the rails, both freight and passenger as i`ve seen. First is to complete the european project of connecting Hungary with the Black Sea, which is mostly done like 70-80%. Through a single high speed corridor of 2 lines. Hungary -> Brasov -> Bucharest -> Constanta. And that`s it. Further high speed rail is a pure fantasy outside that corridor. And by high speed i mean 120 km/h or 160 km/h downhill. Second is to disrupt the rail border crossing activity so much that it becomes unfeasible to transport cargo by rail because this way, border checkpoints can smuggle more by car and can tax more. For real. That`s what many locals from different areas near the Ukrainian, Serbian and Bulgarian border told me. There`s purposefully underdeveloped rail infrastructure to encourage car infrastructure. Some politicians also openly admitted on national news that roads are more important than rail for reasons they made up. Romania is hilly and mountainous area where straight levelled lines of high speed rail is nearly impossible. You can see on maps how the rail network follows the elevation maps and you would see tunnels only where it would be impossible to route around. Rail earthwork is minimal and tunnels are sketchy at best. Hungary for example is a flat stretch of land where building high speed rail requires only some earthwork and it`s basically a straight line in all directions. Rail in Romania is so slow because the rolling stock is primitive. I`m talking old enough to not find it on google. The tracks are in an incredible state of disrepair and it`s a miracle derailments aren`t more common. You can find news about rail bridges in the south collapsing literally minutes after a train passed on them. It`s a matter of how can politicians divert most funds from EU funded projects, and car infrastructure wins because people need to travel where rail doesn`t reach, thus everyone and their dog has a car and it`s so sad. Building a rail corridor is expensive and requires minimal maintenance for decades once it`s done. Highways require gigantic amounts of earthwork and constant maintenance after completion, yielding more profit per km. Romanian rail is the reason the old population still supports the old socialist regime. Old people figured out rail is better than car and they had the chance to see rail infrastructure rot during their lifetimes. Being born in Romania is my primary reason to move in a country where men have more balls than cars.
Recently, Romania opened a big section of good upgraded railway from Sighisoara to Simeria, two small cities in transylvania, and theres also a good small railway between arad, and the border city of curtici. Also, Romania is building a improved railroad from Simeria to Curtici, and from Sighisoara to Brasov, their doing this to connect budapest to bucharest, as the bucharest-brasov portion is okay
Belgium weather is much worse for road maintanance, not to mention Belgium is a transit country that means much more trucks per road that are the real killer.
There are actually more reasons why trains are not goven attention and it has to come to the fact that some see railway construction as a reminder of comunist years (at least thats what I heard). And also because, like many other countires în the region, people generaly love cars a lot more because its seen as a symbol of wealth and respect. A bad mindset: yes, but its just there. So its gonna take years to change this undeserving image în România.
The biggest development in the last 20 years in this field is the creation of local private champion builders, who are building faster, better and cheaper than the subsidiaries of Western corporations who dominated the highway construction market until recently. I''m referring to UMB Spedition, who is now the biggest construction company in Romania. It's not easy to enable such huge companies to rise when the whole country started from scratch in 1990. We're now on a much better path. We didn't abandon trains, but the network is extremely underfunded right now.
I hope they won't forget about their train network. Though when their road network is in such a bad state, I understand why they want to fix that first. Though again, their train network is also not up-to-date. I guess since they cannot spend their money twice, they made the decision to go for roads.
Corruption. Also, American-style, car-centric mentality that started gaining more and more ground mentally in Romanian's heads. I had countless discussions online with people almost calling me idiot if they had the opportunity-only because I said some cities should get their tram network back, that more bike lanes are needed in cities (especially Bucharest). They see public transit of any kind as something for the poor and think that you need a car to get around everywhere. They even go to supermarkets that are 10 mins drive away, no matter if they spend another 15 to get an available parking lot, and they complain about not having enough highways and bridges and other various car infrastructure. If you talk with these people about alternative transport modes, at one point they straight up call you Marxist (yea, it happened to me). Besides, new development are all car centric, with apartment buildings very close to each other, surrounded only by parking lots. The only form of public transit there is the bus, at best.
Don't worry, they don't forget, even if the video failed to mention the ongoing billions Euro rail work being done in Romania (funded by EU mostly) and the work projects launched now, it's still taking place.... (for the rest yeah the video is pretty right about the current state of most of the romanian rail network, sadly).
As a Romanian, I'm extremely upset about the focus on highways, millennials and gen Zs don't associate railways with communism and a good train infrastructure is far less polluting and madness inducing than highways full of cars and traffic jams. Plus, railways do a much better job of connecting us to the rest of Europe and make it easier to visit friends or go on vacation in other countries. Railways should be the priority.
Any video about Romania: Corruption, poverty, incompetence, corruption, Ferentari, so bad, worse than hell... Meanwhile Romania being the fastest-growing economy of a continent for a decade now surpassing its every neighbouring region in gdp per capita and wages.
It's not an amazing video at all, it's nearly all misinformation, "one of the poorest countries in the eu" it doesn't even make top 10 poorest, and has the 7th largest gdp in the eu. The issues he brought up are 3d world issues romania hasn't had since 2000, I was expecting to see a video highlighting the actual problems. This video is straight up just a Romanian hate video, with extreme misinformation
Recent am călătorit cu trenul după o perioadă de 15 ani si îți pot spune ca condițiile sau îmbunătățit și timpi de de călătorie deci comparabil cu acum 15 ani da lucrurile sau îmbunătățit cât despre gropi asta nu ei adevărat am călătorit și am lucrat în majoritatea tarilor europene și îți pot spune ca starea drumurilor naționale județene ei mai buna decât în Belgia sau Franța cât despre infrastructura feroviară îți pot spune ca se repara și pasul în care acest lucru se face a crescut semnificativ din 2021 pentru ca România se grăbește sa îndeplinească cerințele pactului gren Dell . Ei adevărat România i lipsește autostrăzile dar acest lucru se întâmplă pt ca de cel mai multe ori corupția încearcă sa fure o parte din fonduri și din fericire pentru ca multe din proiectele sunt pe fonduri europene oficial corupți nu vad niciun beneficiu sa facă eforturi pt construirea de autostrăzi pentru ca nu pot fura acei bani deci exist multă birocrație pentru acest fonduri europene care fac verifica și reverificare greoaie și aduc întârzieri dar cred că în următori 10 ani o sa vedem o schimbare masiva a infrastructurii .
@@adrianenache6794 Deci pe tine te deranjează ca nu am pus diacritice corect 🤣🤣🤣 deci dacă nu am pus Ă Ș Ț etc sunt analfabet dar nu te interesează percepția celorlalți si apropo de călătorit cu tenul o fac ocazional .
I understand your video, but I feel it seems just a bit biased. First of all, I HATE the arrogance of westerners when they use "Europe" as in "European Union". These are 2 very different things - Europe means the whole continent, not just the EU. We probably have the worst roads in the EU, but for sure not in Europe. Ukraine (even before the war), Moldova, Albania have much worse roads. Second, I don't understand why you needed to include stock footage from what I think is an African country, which you used twice. I find it very hard to believe you couldn't find stock footage of Romanian roads. Third, there are some some major inaccuracies in your video. For example the A0 ring road highway is very much underway for some time now, I drive near the construction site on a daily basis, and half of the road will actually be (hopefully) opened by the end of this year. Forth - I do really believe that a lot of the blame for car accidents are with the drivers themselves. It pains me to say, but I think we have the least skilled drivers in Europe, and when I say less skilled I mean a lot of people that will blindly put themselves into a dangerous situation just to overtake or get past you. Most accidents happen due to careless or drunk/high drivers, not due to infrastructure. Sixth - we are still way behind in terms of km of highway, especially when you take into account that Romania is a fairly big country (it's as big as the whole of Yugoslavia was).
It’s a stupid thing what u said. Yes, u were right that the trains are horrible although there are some modernised lines, but the Romanians don’t see the trains as a communist symbol, they just take the car because it is faster than the train. Train tickets are also expensive, from cluj to bucharest u pay 160 lei (train) and u arrive in 10h and with the car u pay 170-180 lei and u arrive in 6h
Once per year I drive with my EV from Amsterdam to Bucharest (bi-weekly with plane) and I can tell that Romania is putting some effort to build some proper highway roads. I love taking the A1 from Arad until Sibu (it stops when passing Sibu) to see its amazing landscape. Romanians are blessed with such a beautiful country. Building highways are complex (civil) engineering feet, especially in the romanian landscape. Not to mention that indeed contractors asking high prices. Poor procurement is one thing but can't do anything about it if there PSD/PNL overlords forces to accept high prices from their contractor friends (corruption).
5:45 No, this is wrong, even if the current highways near Bucharest, like Bucharest-Constanta or Bucharest-Pitesti were indeed built in the past, the highways you see on the north and west of the map are recent builds, some from the past decade and some more recent... (by the way you also forgot to draw the small A3 section between Oradea and the hungarian border)... but your statement that "most have been built in the 70 and 80's" is not accurate...
Trains struggle to compete. They're completely inflexible, crazily expensive to operate, tied up with endless rules and regulations, completely at the whim of trades unions and very prone to wild cost overruns on construction projects. For Romania, it's better to build roads and let everyone crack on. A collectivist transport system is a legacy of a period when there was no alternative.
In an age where people think about the environment, maybe trains were a greener solution. However, we are moving towards the use of electric cars, so who knows this project is not such a bad idea.
As a romanian working in Poland i have 95% highway till Romanian Nădlac Border... when i enter in Romania till Bucharest is a real pain with lacking of highways... I hope in near future that will change.
That's the way had (and still have) place in Poland. After joining the EU in 2004, Poland was investing almost only in road network. And today Poland has one of the best expressways networks in Europe. And it's still in a development. However since a few year there is contiuoslu incresingly investment in railroads network. I suppose there is anidea to create infrastructure like in Germany - with intense roads network, railways network and inland water transportation network.
So, just when in many other countries the scales are beginning to fall off people's eyes and we start to realize what a con the "car-centric" infrastructure was, Romania decides to dive in and give it a go, rather than learn from other societies' mistakes. All I can say is "good luck" :)
I'm from Romania and I have lived through all this. The transition to cars and abandonment of trains wasn't a choice. Here is how it happened : Romania had an industry that needed to ship wares and people around by trains. Some people had cars, but they were the exception. Trains took people from city to city, and buses took people from villages to work in the factories in the cities. Romania was in a transition phase, from mostly rural to mostly urban population. Everyone had parents and/or grandparents living in the countryside, on which they depended for food. Communism fell, Western investors came with offers to buy the old factories and modernize them. But the Communists staged protests under the "we don't sell our country" slogan, and took over the industry, hoping to make a big profit. They eventually ran everything into the ground. Factories closed , people were out of jobs. Now we get to our problem : no factories, combined with huge corruption and diesel fuel trafficking meant no more trains and busses to carry people to and from villages and remote towns. People had families there , the only way to get there was by car. The whole country spiraled deeper into corruption , factories were scrapped, even the commercial fleet was sold to scrap metal. The EU wanted to invest in infrastructure, but they could not trust the corrupt government, lead by a former communists who obeyed orders from Moscow, and tried to keep the country away from Western influence. A boom of car smugglers , fake registrations, non profit organizations and churches with thousands of registered cars appeared over night, priests made a ton of money, drug traffickers and hookers in Corvettes and Porsches, fuel smuggling to war torn Serbia was a national sport... Oh, the 90s were such a fun time :)
@@carcotasu081 Sure but the attitude is all wrong. Putting in a highway WITHOUT supporting rail infrastructure will set the country down a dark path for many decades
@@jonm3131 There are a lot of reparations on the railway system. The problem of Romania is that it LACKS a highway system. That is extremely important for trading.
except all of the countries that have decent public transit also have a half-decent network of highways. Your idea of a perfect country with no highways but great public transit does not exist. Romania had none of that, and it needs both of them. About 2500km of highways and 4.000km of modernized railroads along with the existing national/local road network should be enough to carry most of the passenger/freight traffic.
Sorry but it's full of bias and errors. The railway was overbuilt on communist times and it's not economically feasable to maintain it in it's previous state. The reduction is a needed adaptation to modern economy and population density. Romania's economy is fastest growing in EU and clearly something is done right with focusing on road infrastructure.
As a romanian, your video is spot on, but honestly the quality of the existing roads became better in the last years and we no longer have the holes that 10 years ago were everywhere. I’d say we have pretty decent road quality now
Road - Rail bridge between Vidin and Calafat is single track only - which is waste of money on potentially huge choke point. For example Vidin is close to Zaječar in Serbia, and Zaječar is connected by rail to Bor - huge mining area in Serbia. There is also a plan to revive Paraćin - Zaječar line, and there is high speed line bteween Belgrade to Niš being built (over Paraćin), so there is possible point for connection for high speed rail Italy - Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania. So that is missed chance for Romania. Some rail lines in the north go though Ukraine, but they are still CFR lines.
In the end, a railway megastructure project may be running before they can walk. In a country with a lot of adverse terrain, building highways with more tolerant gradient and curvature limits is probably easier, and getting international cars and lorries in will give a quicker economic boost than trains. Also, a railway megastructure project is going to be hampered by poor road infrastructure during construction. The old railway network is likely unsuitable for modern passenger and freight transport in its current form, and rail project is likely to involve the creation or realignment of much of the track in order to allow for bigger, faster trains.
Romanian here! I’ve been looking into this particular problem myself and I must say that your video essay handles it flawlessly. While the motorway infrastructure has barely started to progress, the railway system is nearly neglected. The only main line under modernisation, the M300, is barely halfway finished, and has been so for a very long time, which is such abig fat shame because Romania has one of the densest railway networks in the EU. I strongly believe that it’s not yet late for reforms in transportation but I fear that my country might just end up in the same shameful situation as the USA.
and still Greece is even worse than romania in its railway... Sadly just yesterday a tragic crash happened between 2 trains, killing more than 50 people... The worst rail accident in the history of greece, and bad infrastructure and the absence of ETCS that should have been installed decades ago is to blame for this... A very sad day for something that has been predicted that will eventually happened but no one listened....
Hi, the highways that were built are great. I grew up in a village where the DN1, the main road from Hungary to Bucharest went through. There was horrible truck traffic and many accidents. Since the Highways were built, the village is more safer and the traffic is minimal.
There is a full train infastructure fully electrified that just need to evolve with new machines and better organization. Romania should stick to it's train tradition.
Not a bad video overall, however, you make it sound way worse than it really is and you mislead the viewers by showing a clip 3:24 from Africa when talking about Romanian roads and also repeatedly showing an old museum steam train (Mocanita) that is used only for tourist sightseeing in the Carpathians and not the current Romanian modern trains Also, when I was in Bucharest last year a lot of work was being done on the A0 and parts of it are finished since your story with the Chinese company building it is not accurate as they are responsible for only 8.6 km so less than 10% of its total length of 101 km We might not have a lot of highways but the other roads are quite decent and potholes are almost inexistent in the last years (seeing more of them here in UK nowadays to be fair). Romania changed a lot in the last 30 years
I would love to travel Romanian rails one day, I am somehow convinced it can't be worse than Croatian which I travel frequently. Being late by two or three hours, random stops because engine failure, electricity switching off and on, train somehow regularily hiting a car on crossing. I want to know how bad Romanian railways can get.
@Várkonyi Tibor ah yes, sure you did Hungarian, totally not like you go commenting fake negative things about romania on every video about it. Terminally online.
Can you make a similar video about Portugal? The government is about to announce a National Railway Project to expand the network and build our first high-speed railways for the next 30 years.
As a Romanian, I can explain how the corruption on building roads works, it's been explained here several times. Basically, it works like this: Imagine in Belgium, a bag of asphalt costs maybe 10 Euros (I don't know the exact price, it's a random price I gave) Now, in Romania, the same bag of asphalt that should cost 10 Euros the companies buy it for 40 Euros. Why? Well, the company is giving the 10 Euros to the guys they buy the asphalt from, maybe 15 even, while the rest of the money goes to the CEO of the company and friends. But in paper, the bag of asphalt costs 40 Euros, and they "gave" the 40 Euros to the guys they got the asphalt from, the other guys do say indeed they got the money and business is "blooming".
As a Romanian, honestly, let the motorways rise. The railway in Romania is horrible. The tracks in most places are slow and old, and the trains are very dirty, sometimes your seat is even pissed over. And CFR is probably going to do nothing about it. The motorways are quick and safe. No potholes, signs, even some green pallets that let you use full beam headlights at night. So mainly, they are in good condition.
0:50 This is not true, Romania is building highways currently but they are also funding giant rail projects, for instance work is going well on the rail line M200 Curtici-Simeria-Brasov who's being renovated (rebuilt from 0 for most parts with new bridges, tunnels, etc...) who's connecting central Romania to Hungary.... and they lately launched new giant rail projects like renovating the line between Hungary and Cluj (which is also being like reconstructed from 0) and also the line who connects Arad (west) to Caransebes and then to Craiova (south)... It's probably one of the EU contry with the most infrastructure projects taking place/starting soon... That being said you're right about the current state of the rail infrastructure in Romania, it's bad clearly.
Things started to move real quick last year, especially on A7. The general explanation is that UE requested urgent a freeway between Ukraine, from North at border, or from East, at Iași via Moldova Republic, and Constanta Dock in oreder to transport the cereals. But for the freeway that connect Moldova to Transylvania, it will take a while. Difficult terrain there.
