Little to no upgrade for Romania's road infrastructure

Romania managed to add only 39 km of highways to its road network in 2014, reaching a total of 683 km of highway infrastructure, according to recent data from the National Statistics Institute. The number is smaller compared to what Romania’s National Company for Highways (CNADNR) said it inaugurated in 2014, namely 50 km of highways. In 2015, CNADNR plans to build 90 km of highways. Romania also had 6,194 km of European roads at the end of 2014, 276 km of roads with three lanes, 1,673 km of roads with four lanes and 22 km of roads with six lanes. At end-2014, Romania’s public roads totaled 85,362 km, up 0.55% year-on-year. Over 17,200 were national roads, 35,505 were county roads and 32,585 were local roads. Based on the type of covering, Romania had 30,240 km (35.4% of all public roads) of upgraded roads, over 22,000 km of roads with light traffic covers and more than 33,000 km of gravel and dirt roads. When it comes to public roads’ technical condition, 44.4% of the upgraded roads and over half of the roads with light traffic layer had exceeded the service life, according to INS. Romania also had 10,777 km of railway lines for public use at the end of 2014, similarly to the year before. The electrified railway lines had a length of 4,029 km, representing 37.4% of the total railway network in operation. Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com