The highway that should be a priority for the Transport Ministry right now is Comarnic-Brasov, which crosses the Carpathians. Integrated into the Bucharest-Brasov highway, it could bring major benefits to Romania in the future, says Valentin Stoica, general manager of design and consulting firm Search Corporation, who was a guest on Wednesday on ZF Live.
“For us it has been obvious for many years that Romania doesn’t have any chance of building a network of 2,000-2,500-km highways without the contribution of private-sector funding. I hope we will manage at least at the 11th hour to start the public-private partnership,” Valentin Stoica says. There are highways desperately needed for years, and Bucharest-Brasov is on top of the list, he adds.
Two other roads that should be a priority for the Transport Ministry are Bucharest’s highway-standards ring road and the Craiova-Pitesti highway, according to him.
The Transport Ministry is currently considering three highway variants for crossing the mountains, Comarnic-Brasov, Sibiu-Pitesti and Targu-Mures-Iasi routes. But for now there is no certain financing for either of them. The ministry is considering EU funds for Sibiu-Pitesti and a public-private partnership for Comarnic-Brasov. Initially a public-private partnership was also considered for Sibiu-Pitesti.
“The Sibiu-Pitesti highway in a public-private partnership is not a bankable project. Sibiu-Ploiesti has a quarter of the traffic on Comarnic-Brasov and costs four times as much because it crosses the mountains through a difficult-to-access area. We are trying to build it with European money, I think it’s the only way,” Valentin Stoica explained.
The Comarnic-Brasov highway is known as one of the most resounding failures of the Transport Ministry, as it was one step away from being built in a public-private partnership, but at the last minute the two companies that were supposed to build it – Vinci and Aktor – changed their minds. The opportunity cost for not finalizing the Bucharest-Ploiesti highway is around EUR50 million per year, according to research by ING cited by the Search Corporation representative.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)