As you will probably know if you have read this, we spent the festive season at our in-laws in Petresti, Satu Mare, at the other end of the country. Having completely forgotten to book flights back when we should have done in October, we ended up driving. The experience was, surprisingly, not all bad.
It helped greatly of course that we could avoid the hellishness of the Valea Prahovei. We don’t think that a day of the holidays passed by without the television news channels showing a three-hour traffic jam between Comarnic and Busteni.
View Maps in a larger map
No, instead of the Valea Prahovei route we took the Valea Oltului option, driving via Pitesti and Ramnicu Valcea to Sibiu, where we spent the night in order to ‘live test’ the newly published Sibiu In Your Pocket, which by a miracle of printing, publishing and distribution was sitting on the reception desk at the Sibiu Ibis not four days after we had uploaded the final version for the printer. (Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t get things done double quick in this country).
The next morning we completed the journey via Alba Iulia, Turda, the nightmare that is Cluj (there is no by-pass), Zalau, Tasnad and Carei.
All in all Bucharest – Petresti is about a nine hour drive, only slightly more than the usually overly-optimistic Google Maps says it will take. Not bad, but it should be remembered that with motorways between major cities it would be doable in around five and a half hours.
At present there is a motorway only on the first 110km of the journey (the old Bucuresti – Pitesti motorway). There is also an odd bit of recently opened motorway somewhere in the Turda area, about 35km or so, which goes from the middle of nowhere to the middle of nowhere, but a total lack of signposting makes it useless. We did in fact see it: the DN1 passes underneath an impressive looking viaduct at one stage, but finding out how to actually get to it was beyond us.
Anyway, lack of motorways aside, the point (yes, there is one) we want to make is that the state of Romania’s national roads is really rather good. At least better than many people appear to think it is.
In fact, the only dodgy bits we hit on the entire journey were when passing through cities, and on the county road between Bobota and Carei, the last leg of the journey. While on the E68 and E81 the road surface is invariably impeccable: nary a pothole to be seen.
Of course, portions of dual carriageway are few and far between, the road passes through way too many villages and the need for motorways remains huge. But the next time somebody says Romania’s roads are terrible, ask them exactly what it is they mean.
{ 46 comments… read them below or add one }
I often do Bucharest – Hateg return trips.
Could be an example or case study for this topic, so…
About 5.30-6 hrs total. I would break them down into:
- Motorway to Pitesti (high speed, boring scenery, surface so and so)
- Pitesti – Targu Jiu , via Valcea (medium speed, villages, lots of traffic, surface ok)
- Targu Jiu – Bumbesti (high speed, surface disastruous: funny combination)
- Crosing the Jiu Canyon to Petrosani (slow, very scenic, surface so and so)
- Petrosani to Hateg (medium speed, scenic, surface and signs supperb, very recent)
Pity you missed the tiny bit of Transylvanian motorway. It makes a massive difference – reduces the driving time from this part of the country to Oradea by at least an hour since it cuts out the incredibly tedious and long drives through Campia Turzii, Turda, and especially Cluj. You can access it from that Alba Iulia road too, though it is badly signposted.
That road (the full one that is supposed to run from Brasov to Oradea must be the longest motorway project in history. It’s been “under construction” for the 8 years since I arrived in the country and as far as I know a fair few prior to that, and still there’s only about 50km of it.
It looks like roads in Romania is a hot topic, judging by the amount of responses here!
I recently did a run to Baneasa from Cluj – following the same route – in order to get some coveted Ikea furniture, and am glad I won’t be making the trip again anytime soon.
The road surface is generally good, but that’s about the only positive thing! Getting stuck behind convoys of trucks on single carriageway roads gets pretty frustrating at times. I suppose a flash car comes in handy here for quick overtaking – probably the best reason for having a high-powered car on such crap roads. The winding roads through the mountains serve not only to slow traffic down, but also make the distance that much more.
During this one trip I managed to see a crashed car upside down on the road, another smashed up car on its side in a ditch, a truck overturned in a ditch and another truck impaled on a crash barrier – just barely keeping it from falling down the side of a mountain. Surely more motorway would have prevented this bit of entertainment. All the crashes also meant that the trip home took 10 hours.
The Pitesti motorway was a welcome break. My favourite bit was the old man hitching on the median – as if he was expecting someone to stop in the fast lane for him.
I also did a run to Budapest (same distance from here as Bucharest) for some more chipboard-based goodness, and it’s a whole other story – the bit past the border, that is. The road instantly gets better. Coming back into Romania is depressing – as soon as you pass the Hungarian side of the border to Bors the road is riddled with potholes. Not a great a welcome back. That said, I went on a weekend trip to Ukraine (something completely unthinkable to Romanians) a while a go, and Romanian roads never felt so good when I got back!
By the way, Craig, you should stop at the Metro in Cluj next time. They have glass bottles of Ciucas.
Yeah, you’re right, from Zalau, there’s no bypass of Cluj, but supisingly there is one from all the other main entrances – A3 from Turda to DN1 towards Oradea and from Valcele (DN1 Turda-Cluj) to Apahida (Cluj-Dej). While more needs to be done, we must acknowledge that there were a lot of things completed in the past years. I like it that this post is one of the few news (if I can call it as such) with a positive note. I can’t wait for the moment where we cut down on complaining but start appreciating and doing.
That would be easier to do Alexandru if Basescu and Boc stepped down.
Probably, David. And as elections are getting close. I agree that Basescu should step down, and he manage to alienate in the last years many of his reluctant but still existing supporters, not so much through the austerity measures and un-constitutional interference in Government decisions, but through his aggressiveness and attacks on figures such as king Mihai I and Raed Arafat, to the extent that those ex-supporters don’t want to vote anymore with the party he was a member of (PDL), but the question is what is the alternative? Traditional PDL supporters are actually traditionally anti-PSD, and as now PNL is allied with them, the question is what is the smart option? PNTCD is almost dead, PRM, PC and PNG are out of the question because of mainly their leaders, and UNPR is a PDL puppet formed of PMs that left PSD, PC and PNL. So again, what is the option? UDMR? Or FDGR – but they have never run for parliament?
What is the perspective of a foreigner on this? Cause the issue is quite clear, there’s seems to be no more viable option to choose from? If for president it would be rather easy in the first tour, hoping the Radu will run this time, and for town hall as well, if you know the candidates, what do you choose for Parliament elections?
Cheers
“no more viable option to choose from”
How come, are we blind and we can’t see our options?
Have we forgotten that both Nastase and Tariceanu took the country to economic growth of more than 8% yearly? Or maybe we don’t understand what this means, or maybe we don’t know what we want.
There is only one option – the USL coalition that have proven their quality over time.
‘Nastase and Tariceanu took the country to economic growth of more than 8% yearly?’
True, but the country was on auto-pilot, enjoying the global boom. A monkey could have run the country and achieved similar results.
Having said that, Tariceanu is easily the best prime minister Romania has had since 1989, by a country mile.
Of course! And Nastase was good too, his macro-economic figures were stunning even if he took the country out of disaster.
It was him who signed the treaties that allowed Romanians to work abroad, thus giving the economy some space to breathe.
And Tariceanu was also the most stylish and charismatic Romanian prime-minister, even the rude Basescu was reduced to silence in the times of Tariceanu.
Now imagine what an alliance between these people and their teams would mean for the country! We’re gonna be the first European country to shake away the crisis!
Only that it’s not possible yet, because dictator Basescu doesn’t want to accept elections when everyone demands elections!
Don’t ask the foreigners cause they can only answer one way: “vote for the best people that you have”.
The problem is in our f*ckin brains that voted for Basescu a second time. We were too stupid to understand that Basescu is a dictator and we really deserve what we’re going through nowadays.
Maybe we should keep Basescu and the PDL for another 2 years in power so that hunger can take us back to common sense. Cause it certainly seems that we haven’t had enough!
It’s Davin Alexandra.
Craig, I was thinking of you and this article when trying to navigate from the city center to Pipera, and bouncing over pot holes, crumbly roads, and raised/sunk ironworks in the middle of the road. I came to the conclusion, that yes, the roads here are a piece of shit.
There is a particularly bad 70 kms from Oradea to Beius. I suggest not taking the route. I did it once starting at 1 am and coming from Hungary it was a shock and a hard way to begin the next 12 hours to Bucharest. Other than that of course there are numerous sections of road in Romania that are indeed awful. But the main problem is the lack of highways. I always wonder what Romania does with its EU funding? Why can’t the country modernize? Hoe come other European countries don’t have any horse carts? What happened in Romania? I have yet to read a book that actually addresses just why Romania is so far behind.
Ha. I was not referring to roads in cities!
Though, interestingly, 10 years ago was well known for its incredibly bad roads, compared to other cities. I would say now that Bucharest is in much better shape than most cities in the country,and notoriously bad shortcuts (like Fabrica de Glucoza) have been repaired in the last years as well.
Yea I know Craig, but one has to compare like with like.
The roads in the cities are piss poor compared to other EU countries except for the new roads, which are just not built to last, and I really don’t think are safe (they have a slippy surface from using too much tar, and not enough stones, not to mention lack of drainage or clear road markings making driving in the rain more dangerous than it should be).
If you’re talking about the main arteries between cities, then standing alone they are not bad. But they are still piddly A-roads compared to the Dual carrageways and motorways that one should expect to find.
Indeed, I often wonder why, in Bucharest, there doesn’t seem to be any drainage on these newly built roads? Especially no gutters – there are gutters in some quiet neghbourhoods that date from the 1930′s, and work well – but none with this new poor quality tarmac.
The people who put in nasty borduri everywhere aren’t capable to build drainage or what?
And when there are drains, who approves the delivery of ‘finished’ roads with drain covers higher than the tarmac, or potholes already visible where the layers of asphalt meet?
And don’t get me started on lane marking – it’s soo funny to drive on a 3 lane street which suddenly turns to a one lane free for all.
And lights – You go from ‘chistmas tree bright’ to ‘hellhole dark’ faster than you can say ‘Oprescu’.
Rant over, feeling better
They seem to have built the roads using the mantra “Fuck it, it’ll do!”
Oh another rant, whoever is responsible for traffic planning is either incompetent or sadistic. Case in point travel up pipera tunari road until you meet the ring road, and then try to join the ring road so you’re traveling clockwise. That junction is one of the most dangerous i’ve ever seen. In order to join the road in that direction you have to cross two lanes of fast moving traffic, and turn into the “fastest” lane of the road you want to be on. Oh and the concrete barriers really restrict your viability as you whether or not it’s safe to cross.
Why the hell didn’t they just go for a standard “merge in” lane?
One of my favorites! Listen to this
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120290631
More Guardian coverage: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/24/romania-anti-government-austerity-protests?newsfeed=true
Boring story now about the protests. 1000 people hanging about the centre chanting slogans which have no real meaning. Besides, they (the protesters) only make up about 0.0000001% of the total population, so they hardly represent the thoughts of the whole nation right? Gawd knows why the local TV stations only focus on this tiny minority though??? Come back Monica Columbo; all is forgiven!!!
In general, you aquire ‘zen’ if you decide that any destination in Romania can be reached in one day. That’s it.
And if you go to France, you estimate one day for Romania and another for the rest of Europe. Simple.
I really don’t think that stating that the surface of the roads in Romania is really quite good is any news to anyone who has driven through the country. The issue is the fact that Romania’s countryside is still living as if WWII never happened–simply put there no highways. So, you are left to follow meandering narrow roads through forgotten villages with horse carts, people and huge trucks trying to deliver the nation’s goods. In normal countries, the transport trucks use what is known as highways. I am always unclear why other Eastern European countries have them and yet Romania does not?
You mentioned Poland…but didn’t mention that it is a large country with about 15 km or so of motorway. The difference in Poland is that the main national roads bypass villages (for the most part)
?! I remember driving 140 km an hour the whole way from Katowice to Wrocław on a four lame highway. Also the road from Katowice to Krakow is like 6 lanes.
Yes, they opened a lot of new infrastructure in Poland recently, top of the line, I hear
The roads I am referring to are from 2003-2004. Where are Romania’s? I remember looking for an apparently newly finished portion of the Transylvanian Highway back in 2010 but couldn’t find it and stopped in at a gas station around midnight. The cashiers were standing around with the local police just talking and I asked one of the officers where the highway was and he laughed and said “highway!?, Romania won’t have one for 70 years or more!” Interestingly, I kept driving a few more minutes and found it. I always wondered what the deal really was, did the police officer really not know about the new road?
Either because:
- Corrupt officials and business tycoons are turning highway projects into permanent cash cows
or
- In order to protect Western Europe: We don’t want invaders to be able to move fast through Romania. We in the Eastern countries have always been better at this bloody stuff, than at mainaining roads
“We’ll fight them on the beaches at Mamaia, we’ll fight them on Valea Prahovei and in the Apuseni if we must, and all the while, they’ll be cursing the roads”. Ha!
Just kidding with the second answer …
Actually, in communist Albania, roads were built in zig-zags precisely to prevent an invading force from picking up too much speed.
My prediction is that Romania will remain the way it is in all respects until the generation of former communist operatives and their children is replaced by wholly new blood. We have 50 years yet.
Yes, I was only partly kidding. Also in the west – France, they made TGV routes in a N-S pattern, and delayed as much as they could the W-E ones (like Paris-Strassbourg TGV line).
That way, they can move and deploy troops along the frontline, but the ‘others’ can’t be in Paris for lunch after having had breakfast in the Wolf’s lair. Or so they hope.
What makes you think that WE will be able to turn the faith of Romania in such a spectacular manner?!
We’re just a handful of smart people remaining in this country and even if we come to power, our hands are tied. It’s not the 50s anymore so that every country can have a fresh start and have every resource at their disposal.
Everything is in private hands nowadays in Romania, even if I personally come to power tomorrow with an incorruptible team I still won’t be able to do anything spectacular because I lack the necessary triggers.
People will live better than today in Romania, with the following conditions:
- a drop in population to 12.000.000 inhabitants (we already have high immigration rates and negative demographics, but it still takes a lot of time)
- a huge economic progress made by the West
But this doesn’t mean at all that people in Romania will ever live better than people in the West. On the contrary.
The hierarchy in Europe has been like that ever since medieval times, with Romania at the bottom of the list. We even discovered gold and still couldn’t reverse the hierarchy. What the hell could we discover more in this country to change its faith?!
I agree with you that the condition of the road surfaces on the main roads in Romania are quite good. The things that make driving in Romania terrible are the painfully slow speeds because of villages and trucks, the lack of dual carriage ways and bypasses. I rode from Debrecen to Huedin recently – 160 km in almost 3.5 hrs, because the diver of the car insisted on keeping the speed limits and not passing in villages. Debrecen to Budapest on the other hand is 240 km and can be done in 2.5 hrs, and is a pleasant drive because you don’t have to pass through any towns or villages.
I think what they mean Craig is that driving is rather slow and tiring. As soon as you get past the Hungarian border it is much measure and faster. Something about the hairpin curves, dogs, horse carts and people all over the roads in Romania. I have drive many, many times from Bucharest to Katowice, Poland via Oradea and it is night and day between driving in Romania and driving in Hungary, the Slovak Republic and Poland.
National Roads are quite good. See this map from SSC: http://i.imgur.com/LAF2q.png
We did the same Bucharest-Carei trip in December 2010, but managed to use A3 and avoid Cluj. We had some GPS applications, in particular Openstreetmap, http://www.openstreetmap.org/, which was pretty good.
The original route Google gave me did include a bit of motorway, but once you leave it you have to go on a minor road for a bit to get back to the DN1, and we weren’t sure if it was any good.
very interesting craig but what this blog really needs is POEMS MAN!!! http://kingofromania.com/2012/01/23/607-am/
That might just be the funniest thing I have seen this year.
Yes Craig, the roads are a fucking disgrace! What I find strange is that everybody appears to be crazy for those over rated German cars and are willing to pay silly money for them and yet they don’t have proper roads to drive them on. So much passion for the cars the locals have here, so much pride in showing them off. If only they had the same passion for making great roads….
English cars rule!
If there’s anything more beautiful than a 2003 Jaguar S-Type, that can only be a Bentley Continental GT.
Bah, Bentley… shit looking car. Old Jags are just as bad, but the new ones look good.
The Bentley Cuntinental GT is German
But they did keep the original design, which is good for the car. The Mulsanne looks wonderful too.
Something must have remained English in this car cause it looks nothing like the ugly models which the Germans produce these days.
Or maybe it’s just me loving cars with 4 round headlights
nah they dressed up the turd that is the Volkswagen Phaeton, and put a Bentley badge on it.
Horrible horrible cars.
If you want a nice little British car, check out the pre-russian TVR’s, Morgan Aero series and anything by Bristol.
Indeed we like to show off, and we do it ‘without honour and humanity’
Sometimes it’s funny (like : blonde chick with gold earrings and chain, fur coat , in a Hummer that she can’t even see out of, trying to park on a Bucharest street), but it’s rarely elegant .
Me, I am amazed that people buy so many SUVs , whatever make or model they may be (useless – on most roads you get by with a real road car, on the others you have to have a real off-roader).
Also, horrible colours, just to stand out (white? come on, refrigerators should be kept inside).