As regular readers will know, we have a train-spotter-in-the-making in the family, whose ambition until last Friday was to travel to every station on the Bucharest metro system. On Friday evening he ticked off the last station (Pantelimon), and now has a full set. So well done him.
Anyway, it was while heading out to Pantelimon that we noticed trains on the M3 line now run from Preciziei to Anghel Saligny, with no need to change at either Eroilor or Nicolae Grigorescu. Excellent. Add in the M1 trains that use much the same stretch of tunnel, and on the portion of the Bucharest metro from Nicolae Grigorescu to Eroilor you now have an incredibly good service. A train comes and goes every two minutes or so. Brilliant.
These changes in the service must have happened at some point in the past month.
Question is, why didn’t Metrorex tell anyone? If you make a major improvement to your service, might be a nice idea to let people know?
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You can see here how bad the state of the metro is http://www.zf.ro/eveniment/metrorex-incepe-anul-viitor-doua-santiere-de-1-7-mld-euro-dar-nu-are-150-mil-euro-pentru-a-finaliza-1-mai-laminorului-cum-comentati-vezi-interviu-gheorghe-udriste-4667153/
Bit of a black hole for money…
All metros are black holes. Think Jubilee line extension etc. Only metros ever built on time and under budget were those constructed by semi-slave labour (Moscow). Bucharest metro is very good if – and it is a big if – you live near a station. I live near Timpuri Noi, work at Universitate. It’s great.
When is the metro line from the city center to the airport to be completed?
Not in our lifetime.
Off topic, but I just spent some time looking through Bucharestian’s site and all the practical advice he gives about the oddities to life here in Bucharest and my questions for Romanians and for expats who have lived here a while are: why is Bucharest this way?! Why the rip off cab drivers, why are there still the dogs 20 years later, why the security booths everywhere instead of the police doing their job, why the bad customer service, why no parking garages, why are drivers so aggressive, why don’t people respect each other more? Was it like this during Communism? Was it like this before Communism? Or, is all the gruffness related to the transition from Communism to a market economy? I may be simplifying things too much, but the way I see it with the drivers for instance, is that everyone only drove a Dacia 1310 and then when some people came into some money and or got credit from a bank they were more than over joyed to show off to their fellow Romanians. Taxi drivers in turn have watched some people getting really rich and are disgruntled with the low taxi fares stipulated by law, so they often want to rip people off as they see others getting ahead and they have no way of doing so themselves unless they start making more money. Has Basescu’s extermination plan when he way mayor completely ended? Will there always be dogs here? Why doesn’t the Romanian police hire more young officers and become robust? Am I correct that the whole way of bribing in Romanian society is indeed a direct result of Communism? I assume that this did not go on before Communism. I just have a hard time figuring out what is because of Communism and what is just part of Romanian culture?
Read this to see why Communism (or the nature of the regime) was the result and not the cause (it is brilliant and an extremely fun read by the way:
http://books.google.com/books?id=duMRAAAAYAAJ&dq=bucharest%20dickens&as_brr=3&pg=PA104#v=onepage&q=&f=false
Written in the 1850s by the way. Wonderful descriptions of Bucharest. Plus ca change…
Thanks Geronimo,
I am just getting started reading it and I see what you mean.
This looks interesting:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0814732011/ref=ord_cart_shr?%5Fencoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&v=glance
actually, it was announced at the same time as the name changes. and just as badly, of course. i understand there are/were signs at eroilor indicating the change, but i haven’t been there in a while so i haven’t checked it out myself.