Connecting Europe Express is a train crossing the European railways. The train left from Lisbon on September 2 and will reach Paris on October 7. The goal of the project is to show the problems the railway infrastructure has in Europe.
Connecting Europe Express enters Romania on September 17th. It will spend 20 hours on the Romanian tracks, covering 850 km. The average speed of the train in Romania will be of 42 km/hour.
The comparison with the Western countries shows the real problems of the railway system in Romania. While in France or Portugal the train will ride 100 km/hour on average, in Romania, it practically slows down to less than half of that average speed.
This shows that, whoever lead the Minister of Transport in Romania, didn’t do his job. Romania is one of the last countries in Europe by the improvements made to the railway system after the fall of communism. In the country, with only few exceptions, passengers ride on old wagons, unheated in the winter and unventilated in the summer. Apart from that, the train stations look like they did back in communism and the whole system is about to collapse.
Only this summer no less than four engines caught fire while on tracks, while many others derailed. This is the image of a system more preoccupied with enriching a very few at the expense of many.
During the last 30 years, Romania had more than 30 ministers of transport. This is another possible cause for the lack of results in a country famous for its missing highways and the mortality rate from car crashes.
Hopefully, at the end of the train’s journey, Connecting Europe project will report the problems in Romania, such as the European Union deciding to take immediate actions to offer Romanians the same level of development as the other European states.
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