These photos – taken on Strada Paris and supplied via a source who wishes to remain anonymous – are magnificent.

As the photographer explains: ‘what makes them so ridiculous is that the driver was working in the garden at the front, but had put the rear end of his van in such a place that he had to offload his stuff in the middle of the road.’

Thereby causing both pedestrians and himself maximum inconvenience.

That takes a special kind of genius.

Our full range of Badly Parked Cars is here. Please keep your submissions coming. This is the email to send them to.

Take the bus, peasants. Click for source

No, that’s not our opinion, instead it’s what we understood from reading this article (part of a series called Five Things Bucharest Should Be Ashamed Of) – written by a chap called Ciprian Ciucu – currently being published over at Contributors, a site dedicated to what can often be decent, well thought through opinion pieces.

As we write, only the first two things on the list of Five Things Bucharest Should Be Ashamed Of had been published. One was mud (read the post – in Romanian – here) while the other was traffic and pollution in the city centre. (You can read that post – again only in Romanian – here).

We can hardly wait to find out what Ciucu will also be listing; we would suggest that the city’s complete inaccessibility for the disabled, the level of street rubbish, and stray dogs should feature.

(And the fact that so many streets are unpaved… and the fact that so many homes are still not connected to mains water… We could go on…)

Anyway, let’s go back to the two things Ciucu has already listed: mud and traffic.

Mud? Yes, alongside its by-product – dust – mud is a problem in Bucharest, one which Ciucu claims is caused partly by drivers parking on muddy pavements and grass verges, and then carrying the mud around the city, and partly by construction site vehicles which are not cleaned properly before using public roads. We would add that the large numbers of mud streets which persist in both the south and north of the city must also have a major impact on the amount of dust that gets dispersed into the air.

So yes, mud/dust is a problem. Whether or not it is one of the top five things Bucharest should be ashamed of however is highly debatable. Indeed, we have doubts as to whether or not it is in fact a stand-alone problem as opposed to a symptom of a larger one: poor infrastructure. Pave every mud street in the city and our guess is that dust levels would drop massively. But we are not experts: we could be wrong. (It has happened before).

As for the traffic… Well, just how bad is the traffic in Bucharest?

Yes, there are certain intersections where the traffic can be awful – often aggravated by endless roadworks – but given that the city is so small, and the distances which need to be covered so short, it never takes all that long to get from A to B in Bucharest. It would be nice if there was not so much traffic (and improving the way in which traffic is directed around the city, and how it flows, would do wonders) but when you have so many people living in such a small space there is bound to be traffic.

In his article, Ciucu suggests that all cars entering the city centre should be charged a fee to do so (a bit like London’s Congestion Charge). This is – in theory – a sound idea. It has worked reasonably well in London. But there is a huge difference between the two cities.

In London there are alternative routes which those who want to avoid the charge can take. In Bucharest there are not, at least not right now. Work continues on making the centura (the Romanian capital’s ring road) a viable alternative, but it is years away from completion. In London, there was also a massive improvement in the standard of public transport – buses in particular – before the charge was introduced. This did much to dampen opposition. The same has to happen in Bucharest: there can be no congestion charge in Bucharest until public transport (which, despite all the odds, is better than most people think) is improved, and until those drivers simply traversing Bucharest have real alternatives to the city centre.

For now, making the Old Town/Lipscani area genuinely car free would be a good start: Bucharest would have a relatively large, dedicated pedestrian area. Few would oppose such a move.

Where we disagree vehemently with Ciucu is when he states that owning a car in Romania is ‘too cheap.’ His exact words are:

Şi mai e ceva. De unde ideea că toţi oamenii trebuie să posede o maşină personală? Dacă-mi aduc bine aminte parcă vine de la nişte socialişti-naţionalişti. Este o idee proastă. O idee mai bună ar fi un transport în comun civilizat şi eficient construit cu taxele mari aplicate şoferilor de auto personale. Eu cred că dacă vrei să conduci o maşină trebuie să meriţi lucrul acesta. Nu-ţi cumperi o rablă cu 500 de Euro, o înscrii şi pe aici ţi-e drumul şi o parchezi la nimerală pe spaţiul public. Să deţii o maşină la noi este prea ieftin. Ca să ai maşină ar trebui să-ţi permiţi trei lucruri: o parcare, o taxă serioasă pentru disconfortul pe care-l provoci celorlalţi şi un tarif la benzină pe măsură, plin de accize şi nu de profit pentru benzinari aşa cum este astăzi la noi. Poţi să-ţi iei maşina şi gratis dar să nu o poţi păstra decât dacă ţi-o permiţi.

In English:

And another thing. Where does this idea that everyone should be entitled to own a car come from? If I remember correctly it comes from some National Socialists. It is a stupid idea. A better idea would be a decent public transport system built with money raised in taxes from owners of cars. I think that if you want to drive a car you should earn the right to do so. You shouldn’t be able to just buy an old car for €500, register it and then drive and park it wherever you want. To own a car in Romania is too cheap. To own a car you should be able to afford three things: a place to park it; an expensive tax to compensate for the discomfort you cause others; high petrol prices, kept high by duty and taxes, not by profiteering petrol stations. You can get a car for nothing but you can’t keep it unless you can afford it.

In a nutshell: the wealthy, who can afford houses with courtyards or apartments with ample private parking places and who can afford high taxes and the high cost of petrol, can keep their cars. The working classes who live in blocks with insufficient parking spaces, and who would not be able to afford high car taxes or higher petrol prices, will have to sell their cars and start taking the bus.

We know that Ciucu means well (well we think he does: we are prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt) but his methodology is wrong. (Remember – we are in favour of Rovinietas for all and agree that those who park illegally should be heavily fined). But high car taxes and high petrol prices hurt the poor far more than the rich, and this is wrong. It is much the same kind of logic as that used by the anti-flying pressure group Plane Stupid, who think that flying has become far too cheap and that it needs to be made more expensive. Yes… and who would that impact upon the most? Rich or poor?

Not for the first time this week, we found ourselves reaching for the Little Red Book.

All together now: ‘A revolution is not a dinner party…‘

As for Domnul Ciucu, we suggest he reads this excellent book.

The PDL senator Iulian Urban came up with – on paper – a sound idea last week:
Fines for driving offences should vary according to the income of the offender.

A sound idea indeed, although not entirely original: Finland has had a similar system in place for years. Other countries probably do too.

But think about it for more than two minutes and it falls apart, at least in a Romanian context.

Few Romanians have their full salary recorded in their cartea de munca. Though the low, flat rate of income tax introduced by the Tariceanu government in 2004 cut much tax evasion, high salary taxes mean that many employers still pay a part of staff salaries in cash, no questions asked, no payment recorded.

This means that those who should in theory receive far higher fines for traffic offences would in fact pay much the same as the poorest Romanians. This alone, in our book, makes Urban’s plan a non-starter. It also makes you think about what planet Romanian parliamentarians live on, or what country they think they live in. It isn’t Kansas. Or Finland.

We have a far simpler, and, we would add, more egalitarian solution: the value of the fine should to tied to the value or power of the offending vehicle. Those driving Dacias would pay less that the drivers of Bemves.

Alas, we can’t see such an idea catching on amongst Romania’s Bemve driving parliamentarians.

Indeed, before they go changing the current cod rutier (highway code), they might want to have the traffic police start enforcing the current one.

Make a list of good public services in Bucharest.

Finished?

Thought so.

There are not that many public services in Bucharest which approach anything that could even be said to resemble ‘good.’ But there are a few…

Rubbish collection is one, at least in our sector (Sector 3). We get our rubbish collected twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays: rain and snow do not stop the rubbish boys. When we tell people in the UK that we have our rubbish collected twice a week they go green with envy. (In the UK, the ‘let’s uphold moral-rectitude’ brigade are pushing for fewer and fewer rubbish collections, in order to make people consume less. They are as misguided as they are wrong. See here).

Schools are another decent public service, and we’ve discussed just why we think so before.

Public transport in Bucharest is also worthy of note. Cheap and reliable if woefully underfunded, we again discovered this morning that the city would be lost without it.

On mornings such as today, when Bucharest goes a bit Doctor Zhivago, the city is kept moving by RATB: the local public transport operator.

We took number one son to school this morning by tram. A tram that runs in all weathers. Even in February when the snow was thigh-high, when schools were closed and the city froze, RATB’s buses and trams kept running. They kept the city moving.

Yes, RATB is probably overstaffed, too many people don’t pay for their tickets, and buses and trams can be very crowded (because there are not enough of them): but by and large it works, and works well.

So it was disconcerting to read yesterday that Bucharest’s mayor, Sorin Oprescu, thinks that RATB is a drain on the city’s budget.

He insinuated that more could be spent on improving Bucharest’s roads if less money was spent on public transport.

It’s nice to know his priorities.

Or maybe he has a point?

Maybe he should do away with public transport altogether (after all, it’s only the little people like us who use it). People should either buy a car and use it in all conditions, or stay at home. Why should they expect the city council to provide public transport for them?

Imagine: no buses or trams to get in the way of all those cars.

Think how wonderful it would be to drive around Bucharest then.

A week or so late, here is Bucharest Life’s Review of the Year that was 2009.

January

A new government, led by Traian Basescu and Little Emil Boc, installed following parliamentary elections at the end of 2008, introduces, amongst other moves of sheer political genius, a compulsory profit tax for small companies (even those that lose money) which leads to the immediate bankruptcy of thousands of small businesses. By the end of June more than 81,000 companies had closed their doors forever.

February

Romania’s blonda mondena of a Tourism Minister, Elena Udrea, launches a new international marketing campaign designed to persuade foreigners to travel to Romania on holiday.

Complete with a cheesy slogan (Land of Choice) and an even cheesier anthem, the campaign ran throughout much of the summer at great cost on Eurosport and CNN.

March

Bucharest City Council tried to go green with a half-hearted attempt to get the city’s inhabitants to begin selectively disposing of their rubbish. We suggested that a campaign to first encourage the good people of Bucharest to start using one bin might be more likely to succeed.

The council also – to the horror of many – approved the construction of the Dambovita Centre. We have our doubts as to whether the project will ever be finalised.

Skint, the Romanian government was forced to put its cap in its hand and head off to the International Monetary Fund to ask for a few pennies to see it through until pay day. The IMF agreed to a loan, though at great social cost: it demanded massive redundancies in the public sector, and a freeze in pensions and salaries. It was the first of many U-turns.

April

In a visit to a Hungarian-dominated area of Romania (part of the Szekelyfold, where Hungarians are in the majority), president Traian Basescu said that the Szekelyfold would never enjoy any kind of autonomy.

Later in the year the main Hungarian political party, the UDMR, would join Basescu in forming a government.

Romania got some international press, including an awful ‘isn’t poverty wonderful‘ piece that appeared in the Austrialian daily WA Today, and two woefully inaccurate stories about Bucharest in the Independent.

May

The city partied all month to celebrate Bucharest In Your Pocket’s 10th birthday.

June

Bucharest Life got its five minutes in the spotlight when an editorial published in Bucharest In Your Pocket (in which we had lovingly nicknamed Tourism Minister Elena Udrea as Romania’s Pitzipoanca-in-chief), was discussed on a political chatshow on Realitatea TV by a hysterical Andreea Cretulescu and her guests.

Cretulescu’s show was ditched by Realitatea later in the year (the two events were not connected).

We also in June officially backed the wrong horse in the Romanian presidential election.

July

Romanian footballer Adrian Mutu is ordered by sport’s highest international court, TAS, to pay €16 million to former club Chelsea for breaching his contract by taking cocaine in 2005.

Bucharest Life took a holiday, but not before finding a real gem of a Bucharest travel guide (and accompanying map of the city before the bulldozers) in the attic.

Metrorex renamed a Bucharest metro station that does not actually exist.

August

The Basescu/Boc government decides that in order to save money, all civil servants (including teachers and medical sector workers) would have to take ten days compulsory unpaid leave before the year’s end.

Madonna came to Bucharest.

September

RATB, the company that operates Bucharest’s surface-level public transport services (trams, buses and trolleybuses) celebrated its 100th anniversary with a parade of vintage trams. Though a success, the event could have been even better had RATB told anyone about it in advance.

October

After a creditable 0-0 draw in Paris against France, Romania’s football team lost a crucial qualifying match against Serbia, in Belgrade, 5-0, thereby missing out on qualification for next year’s World Cup in South Africa. Coach Razvan Lucescu pledged to build a new team, without rapidly fading star Adrian Mutu.

November

The Bucharest metro celebrated its 30th anniversary just a few days after its workforce – amongst the highest paid non-skilled workers in the country – had staged a three day strike for higher pay that caused chaos and brought much of the city centre to a standstill.

December

In the presidential election Traian Basescu narrowly defeated challenger Mircea Geoana in a run-off. So narrow, in fact, was the margin of victory, that Geoana had initially declared himself the winner, after three exit polls had shown him to hold a two point lead over Basescu.

Indeed, Basescu won fewer votes in Romania than Geoana. The difference was made by the Romanian diaspora, which voted in huge numbers for Basescu. More than 100,000 people voted for the president abroad (and less than 30,000 for Geoana). Basescu’s final winning margin was less than 70,000 votes.

Basescu immediately disappointed many of his voters by appointing Little Emil Boc to once again be his muppet of a prime minister.

Elena Udrea (whose Land of Choice campaign was such a disaster that the number of foreign visitors to Romania actuall decreased by more than 25 per cent in 2009) was given an enlarged ministry, now including the regional development portfolio, which will oversee the distribution of more than €4 billion in EU funds.

Ker-ching!