On road infrastructure and car fleet renewal

The contract for one of the most difficult sections of the Sibiu-Pitesti motorway has been signed.

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Leyla Cheamil, 08.02.2022, 13:50

The weak point of Romania’s road infrastructure is the small number of motorways, covering only 950 km in total. This is the lowest motorway density in Europe, compared to the country’s surface. Last year, 30 km were added to the Romanian high speed road network and authorities plan to keep extending it this year as well.

A contract with an experienced Turkish construction company for the design and construction of the second section of the A1 Sibiu-Pitesti motorway was signed on Monday. With a length of 32 kilometers, the Boița-Cornetu segment is the first motorway segment in Romania crossing a mountain. Its cost was put at 4.2 billion lei. It has 49 bridges and viaducts, seven tunnels and one wildlife crossing. The contractor has 50 months to build it.

Things finally seem to move in terms of motorway construction in Romania. Works are currently under way on one of the most awaited motorways in the country, a fist segment of 13 km, linking Sibiu to Boița. The contractor says construction works will be completed in December. Works also started last year on the motorway section 5 between Pitesti and Curtea de Arges, with a length of 30 km, due to be completed in 2025. Transport Minister, Sorin Grindeanu, said he had a working meeting with the Serbian side on the topic of building the Timisoara-Belgrade motorway. According to Grindeanu, an accord in this respect accord will be signed in late March.

On Tuesday, the government’s car fleet renewal programmes for physical persons, called Rabla Clasic and Rabla Plus were launched. The bonus is 6,000 lei for an old car and 9,000 lei for two old cars. One or two additional bonuses of 1,500 lei will be granted if the cars handed over for scrapping are older than 15 years and have the Euro 3 or lower pollution rate. Another eco-bonus is the one worth 3,000 lei for the purchase of a hybrid vehicle.

A novelty of Rabla Plus is the fact that an old car must be scrapped for the purchase of a new one. Also, for every new vehicle, a maximum of 2 cars can be scrapped. For the fully electric and hydrogen propulsion cars, the bonus is 51,000 lei and, if two old cars are scrapped, the bonus can go as high as 57,000 lei. In the case of both programmes, the value of the bonus cannot exceed 50% of the selling price of the new car. (EE)