The capital has approximately 24 kilometers of public transport lanes, which means very little. And they are not respected either, according to an article recently published in Contributors.

Horia Benescu is a specialist in infrastructure investments and European funds. For 10 years he worked as an expert appraiser of local infrastructure projects. In an article published on the analysis and synthesis site Contributors.ro, Benescu writes about some of the problems with traffic in Bucharest, the main of which is the lack of information from the authorities.

What the expert says – the main thoughts:

• “Bucharest: 24 km of dedicated bus/trolley lane, 76 sanctions applied in 12 months and 65 vehicles driving irregularly in one bus lane for 60 minutes.​

• Starting with the failures of the local police of the Municipality of Bucharest, and especially the Metropolitan Police and the Bucharest Traffic Police Brigade, we have conducted an experiment on traffic enforcement in public transport lanes in Bucharest.

• Thus, for an hour I observed the traffic in the STB corridor (separated from the rest of the traffic flows) on the Aviatorior Boulevard in Bucharest, in the direction between the Aviatorior statue and Charles de Gaulle Square. The experiment was conducted on Friday, March 8, 2024, from 16:00 to 17:00.

• Practically during this interval, 45 vehicles (excluding STB buses and taxis), as well as 20 motorcycles and scooters (of which 15 are vehicles) passed through the lane designated for STB buses.

• Among the 45 vehicles that did not follow traffic rules and drove in a special lane for public transport, there were also 3 special cars of the Ministry of Interior, two gendarmerie and one of the capital police. None of these special vehicles of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which were moving along the STB lane, had their sound and/or light signals on.

• The vast majority of those traveling on the STB lane during this interval were vehicles registered in Bucharest (32), to which are added 3 MAI special cars, followed by 4 passenger cars registered in Ilfov County, 2 in Arges County, 2 belonging to the Diplomatic Corps , one registered in Sibiu County and one in Galați County.

• These findings cannot be extrapolated as the data collected does not apply to many areas, types of local street with passenger lanes, days or time slots and therefore cannot be fed into a data modeling system to provide a general understanding of STB bus and/or trolleybus priority compliance along special corridors for their movement”.

Analysis, about co-authors.

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