STUCK IN TRAFFIC?
How poor planning created Europe’s capital of chaos
● It was 8.30am and Valentin Mihai showed a brave face as he inched his Volkswagen Golf past former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s sprawling palace, the largest building on the planet after the Pentagon.
Bucharest was blanketed in a surprise few centimetres of snow, but that didn’t make any difference. “At this hour, with or without the snow, it’s just slow,” said Mihai, an Uber driver. “I don’t have the words to describe it.”
Three decades after his demise, the legacy of Ceausescu’s megalomania is to make Bucharest the most congested capital in the EU for the past three years. The city lags at least a decade behind major European peers in tackling the most pressing issues — traffic and pollution — and nobody seems to know what to do about it.
On Tuesday, the city’s mayor scrapped a planned tax designed to reduce the number of cars downtown after a public outcry.
Nowhere in Europe had such a brutal, chaotic dictator as Ceausescu lorded over city planning. That was swiftly followed by a deep love affair with the car. . Add in a building boom and an influx of people to the country’s economic dynamo, and you have a city that barely moves for hours of the day.
The weight of cars clogging Bucharest streets each day is robbing every driver of nine days and 11 hours of life per year, equivalent to the time it takes for Romania’s main vehicle exporter to make 15,600 cars. That’s driving up costs for businesses, including delivery, courier and taxi services, while the bumper-to-bumper lifestyle is damaging health and threatens to deter investment.
The number of respiratory diseases such as asthma has tripled in Bucharest during the past five years, especially because of traffic pollution, according to Beatrice Mahler, the manager of the city’s Institute for Pneumology.
Tech giant Ericsson would have a hard time choosing Bucharest again for new offices because of the congestion, said Dragos Rebegea, the Swedish company’s chief in Romania. “We have colleagues who spend two to three hours a day in traffic,” he said. “People should come to work with a positive energy, not after being stuck in traffic.”
The Bucharest municipality plans to spend à518m (R8.6bn) this year on projects to improve traffic and combat pollution, including maintaining the existing road network and subsidies for public transportation. After buying 400 diesel buses two years ago, it now plans to buy 130 hybrid buses.
There is a crazy amount of cars in Bucharest. I plan my life around traffic Nicoleta Schroeder Uber local manager
The planned levy, dubbed the “oxygen tax”, on higher-polluting vehicles had been due to come into force on January 1. But Bucharest mayor Gabriela Firea said there was too much opposition. It would have applied to about 13% of the car owners, who would have had to pay as much as $420 (R6,400) a year.
“Apparently we want more polluting cars on the streets,” Firea said. “This public survey had a very clear answer: the citizens reject the idea of restrictions. We aren’t willing to accept a measure that’s been very successful across Europe.”
Ceausescu was like no other leader in the eastern bloc. His regime was the most repressive and Romania’s economy was crippled by debt. He embarked on huge costly glamour products such as the People’s Palace, with public transportation an afterthought.
The country exported whatever it could to pay debt, leading to brutal shortages and even starvation. People had to wait between five and seven years before getting the trademark Dacia car. Fuel was rationed.
Then came the revolution in 1989 and his execution. Since then, Bucharest’s population has doubled and the number of cars tripled, a status symbol in a country that was deprived of them.
PwC reckons the number of cars reached 1.4-million in 2018, about the size of the city’s population. There is one parking spot for every five cars, according to Uber.
Those who make a living on the Bucharest roads aren’t waiting for congestion to get better any time soon. The country’s largest online retailer, eMag, has resorted to creating its own electronic mapping system, which alerts delivery drivers to heavy traffic.
Uber is working on similar technology, said the platform’s local manager, Nicoleta Schroeder.
“There is a crazy amount of cars in Bucharest,” said Schroeder, who added that her family has now reduced the number of cars they own from one per person to just one vehicle. “Like everyone, I plan my life around traffic.”