Mayoral candidate revives 170-year-old project connecting Bucharest to the Danube River

Liberal (PNL) candidate for mayor of Bucharest, Sebastian Burduja, who recently presented his plan for the city, argued that the Romanian capital should strive to become a port on the Danube. The project was first envisioned roughly 170 years ago, in the 1850s, by the Romanian authorities at the time.

"It's a project that I am very passionate about, and it's called 'Bucharest, a Port on the Danube.' We have a Danube-Bucharest canal, which is about 70% complete. No one has been able to do this in 34 years. The idea does not come from the communists, it comes from Alexandru Ioan Cuza,” Burduja stated, cited by G4Media.

“Imagine what it would be like for Bucharest to join the league of European cities that are Danube ports: Budapest, Belgrade, Vienna, and Bratislava. We belong to this club. By the way, water transport is the cheapest form of transport. A Danube cruise from Bucharest to Vienna? Sure! A cruise from Bucharest to the Danube Delta? Why not? I've said from the beginning, we should not aim for small things, small stakes make small people and small cities, big stakes make big people and big cities," he concluded.

The promise is not new. In 1853, the Romanian Telegraph reported in Cyrillic script about the plan to create a port in Bucharest, allowing ships to travel from the Danube, near the capital, via the Argeș and Dâmbovița rivers. The idea was initially abandoned but has been revisited periodically. It was also proposed by former mayor and current candidate Gabriela Firea four years ago. Back then, she wanted to use EU funds to connect Bucharest to the Danube.

“Investment was made up to about 70% by the 1990s. Due to the stagnation and abandonment of these works, currently, the projects have been destroyed, with the current completion stage being about 50%," the Bucharest City Hall reported four years ago.

Work on the Dâmbovița-Danube canal began in 1986 and was abandoned after the Revolution of 1989. President Ion Iliescu was the first, after the Revolution, to talk about the necessity of resuming the project. He believed that it would give way to more tourism in the area.

Aside from the port idea, Sebastian Burduja also made proposals for combating drugs, moving transport underground, district heating, digitalization, and a green Bucharest.

(Photo source: Inquam Photos | George Calin)