Access to Bucharest subway congested after upgrade works

Travelers taking the Bucharest subway had to wait for several minutes in a row on July 18 to be able to enter the Pipera metro station in the capital, News.ro reported. The Pipera station, one of the busiest in the capital and serving the corporate workers in the area, reopened on Monday, July 17, with the newly installed access points. Metrorex, the operator of the Bucharest subway, began this spring modernization works to replace the 20-year old turnstiles with modern swing gates. The delays were caused by a readjustment of the way the current subway card is used. On the old turnstiles, the paper card was introduced in the machine with the red arrow pointing down, as shown on the card. The new swing gates system requires the card to be inserted in the opposite direction, with the arrow pointing towards the traveler not the access point. The swing gates access system was designed to work with contactless cards. Metrorex said a new design for the cards will be available once the modernization works are finished. In the meantime, it deployed staff to assist travelers in using the old cards as required by the new system, and it put up signage showing how the cards should be used. It also increased the number of access gates and took into account adjusting the entrance-exit flow depending on the traffic corresponding to several time frames. Several other subway station experienced congestion on Wednesday, July 19, as some of their entrances are closed for modernization works. The transfer from Unirii 1 to Unirii 2 station took as much as 20 minutes today, Digi24.ro reported. Three of Bucharest’s four subway lines go through Unirii 1 and Unirii 2 stations, which see daily some of the highest traffic in the network. Eroii Revoluţiei and Păcii, two other stations where works are currently ongoing, were also crowded. Metrorex reopened the Pipera station on July 17 after being closed for only two days, during the weekend. The station has only one access, and would have been completely unusable throughout the initially estimated upgrade time of one-week. In June, Metrorex said it would close it for three days. Upgrade works are planned at Aurel Vlaicu station between July 29 and August 1, at Constantin Brâncoveanu station between July 22 and July 25, at Tineretului and Apărătorii Patriei stations between September 2 and September 5, at Dimitrie Leonida and Costin Georgian stations between September 9 and September 12, and at Pantelimon and Berceni stations between September 16 and September 19.