Bucharest mayor candidate uses Waze to get a head start in her campaign

As the campaign for the June 5 local elections in Romania kicked off on Friday, the candidates have already started throwing promises at their potential voters. Gabriela Firea, the Social Democratic Party - PSD’s candidate for the Bucharest mayor seat, thinks she has found a solution for the capital’s nightmare traffic: Google’s popular Waze app. The local Waze community reacted saying that they didn’t agree with Firea’s attempt to use the popular app for campaigning and that the Bucharest City Hall already has a partnership with the Waze Romania Community. Gabriela Firea quoted international statistics that showed that Bucharest has some of the biggest traffic jams in the world and said that one of her priorities was to solve this issue with better traffic lights management and improved public transport. “We’ll make the first step by joining the Waze Connected Citizens global program, which gives the authorities real-time information on traffic, potholes, accidents, and congestion, collected from the Waze app users, which can be used to optimize the waiting time at traffic lights and improve the public transport’s coordination,” Firea said in a Facebook post. The Waze Romania Community said in a statement that their team had already started a partnership with the Bucharest City Hall, and said they disapproved with Firea using their name for campaigning. “We believe that, if Mrs. Gabriela Firea really wanted to conclude a partnership with our team she would have notified us before making her plan public. Thus, we could have informed her that the partnership she proposes for the future already exists in the present,” said Paul Dorneanu, the coordinator of Waze Romania Community. The statement also notes that Waze.ro (the website of the Waze Romania Community) doesn’t officially represent Waze Mobile Ltd., respectively Google Inc. However, Dorneanu said that he represents the Waze Romania Community and has been authorized by Waze-Google to talk to the Romanian authorities about ways to cooperate. The Connected Citizens Program is a partnership between Waze and various international government agencies to share publicly-available incident and road closure data. The drivers use the Waze app to share information on traffic, road hazards, road conditions, and weather. The data is then aggregated and analyzed by Waze and used to provide detailed information on what’s happening on the roads. Bucharest ranks 6th in the world for traffic congestion (Photo source: Gabriela Firea on Facebook)