In Romania, a car-obsessed country, the application of European mobility policies oscillates between the enunciation of general principles, the promotion campaigns and the uncorrelated partial actions.
The mobility has taken larger proportions, especially at urban level, where the multiplication of the vehicle number and the travelling while road sections generally remain constant has determined the pronounced congestion of traffic and the necessity of rethinking infrastructure, as well as the reconsideration of the users’ current behaviour.
In this context and considering that currently most of the European citizens live in urban areas, on 30 September 2009 the European Commission has adopted a General Action Plan regarding urban mobility, by which it proposes 20 measures to support the local, regional and national authorities in the promotion of sustainable urban transport as a basis for fighting climatic changes and favouring social cohesion. The recommendations it formulates focus on the management of the main challenges identified in the Green Card of urban mobility (promulgated on 25 September 2007), specifically: urban congestion, car accidents, air pollution and energy consume. The document enunciates as a main purpose the increasing of mobility and its quality, thus aiming at changing the travel-related behaviour, protecting the passengers’ rights, favouring the public-private partnerships and the revaluation of existing funding, promoting intelligent transport systems, facilitating the information exchange, encouraging integration and interoperability and improving road security.
The result of a sustained effort, carried out during a larger period, the plan was started in 2007, then stopped, resumed and finally promoted at the end of 2009. The document was initially written in English and then translated to over 20 languages, Romanian also among them (http://eurlex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:DKEY=501754:EN:NOT), being foreseen a gradual diffusion of its actions in the member states during the following four years, according to the specificity of the local contexts. Though rather recently adopted, the plan has aroused numerous discussions especially due to the translation inadequacies and interpretation deficiencies which doubled the differences of circumstances.
For a better adaptation, at the beginning of 2010 the member states were asked to choose from the 20 measures three actions considered of maximum importance at national level, which would be regarded as priority till 2012. Romania established as priorities in this field the acceleration of the implementation of sustainable urban mobility plans (action 1), the optimization of the existing funding resources (action 14) and the participation in the international dialogue and in the information exchange (action 18).
Mobility supposes road infrastructure and vehicles, as well as management. Even if there are high-performance technical equipments, they are often insufficient without a good planning, thus measure 1 was established as priority by the majority of states, regardless of the current stage of their infrastructure.
In practice, at local level, more and more Romanian localities get involved in international partnerships in the mobility field and the main problem consists in the discrepancies between the newly integrated states to the EU and the highly developed states. The European city networks work in terms of mobility via the projects developed by programmes as URBACT, STEER, CIVITAS, which generally focus on so called „soft” actions, aiming at increasing the population awareness of the benefits of non-polluting and energetically efficient transport means and at promoting bicycle riding or walking and the preferential use of public transport.
It is true that in Romania the personal car has achieved an important representation value, being many times adopted for image reasons and not as a consequence of a real need. It sometimes acts as a guarantee for a certain social position, while walking or riding the bicycle or going by public transport is associated to poverty, if it is not completely ignored as a transport alternative. However, the lack of viable alternatives makes it even more difficult to persuade people to adopt sustainable transport means. The lack of space for the pedestrians for example, the pollution, the overcrowded public transport, uncomfortable and inefficient in terms of the consumed time and the intermodality left rather to a concept level, justify the population’s reluctance regarding the adoption of sustainable travelling modalities. At the same time the mobility supporting campaigns are rather isolated and they have a low impact. Most frequently a road is closed to the traffic during one day, maximum two, when it is not limited to only one afternoon per year, for the organization of various exhibitions and contests, after which, in the following days, the old habits are resumed with the same determination.
On the other hand, the funding offered in this filed favours especially the states which already have multiple viable options and the only question to be aroused is the motivation. It is precisely for this reason that the European recommendations and the established priorities are regarded with a lot of scepticism in Romania. Our country has usually focused on small interventions, insufficiently correlated, which have not managed to exploit very well the available resources. Furthermore, there are outstanding important deficiencies regarding information. Except for the scarce public data on the passengers’ rights and the way of claiming them, at national level there is no clear evidence of all the local steps taken in the mobility field.
By now many of the undertaken actions stood out through an accentuated formalism, in the sense that many works were carried out in order to tick off a necessary chapter for the classification in a certain category or to attract funding, with the eternal excuse of insufficient resources. In this respect, in the capital the mistakes seem to have been more significant than in the rest of the country. Such an example are the so called bicycle tracks in Bucharest, which sooner look like „bicycle stripes” thoughtlessly drawn on the pavements, with multiple level differences, without any apparent functional logic and sometimes completely monopolizing the pedestrian space. Fortunately, in the provincial towns, the actions are however undertaken with a little more perseverance and understanding. For example, in the centre of Ploie?ti the bicycle tracks have been correctly placed and fitted, and the arrangements and measures were taken more seriously, consequently they worked.
The good news is that through the involved commitments and stakes, the adoption of the Mobility Action Plan, whose implementation is closely monitored by the EU, has the capacity to become a deciding factor of stimulation of the initiative in the field and of reconsideration of the issue with seriousness and honesty at general level in Romania.
Photo: Irina Rotaru
