this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
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Ukraine opens its first railway line with European track width standard, boosting the countryโ€™s integration with the European Union (enlargement.ec.europa.eu)
submitted 1 week ago by Sunshine@piefed.ca to c/buyeuropean@feddit.uk
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[โ€“] petrescatraian@libranet.de 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

@benjhm You mean having the Ukrainian companies do the work? Well, I am afraid that they will become "Romanian" once they cross the border. It's not about the reliability of railways once made, and not even the routes (these are good, only when they are actually completed). I'm talking about the bureaucracy.

Say the government finally wants to modernize a certain route. First, there is a feasibility study. Following a public tender, a company is declared a winner. Then the other company contests the result to the court. It takes a year for the court to give a verdict. Then the feasibility study is completed. If there is an allocation for the project in the next yearly budget, we can go on with the actual execution. If not, and the feasibility study expires (those do have an expiration date), we get back to step one. Almost all the time, some expropriation happens - i.e. people's properties get taken by the state in order to facilitate the construction. People get unhappy by the amount of money they receive as a compensation, so they sue the state. Compensations are settled, so now there can be a public tender for execution. Just like with the feasibility study thing, the loser goes to the court in the hopes the result is changed. I forgot to mention that if the complainer is right, then the tender starts all over.

Alright, execution happens. The winner works according to the amount of money is paid (of course) by the government. Which, as the railways get 12 times less money than highways, is also low. So construction goes with 0.something% every month. There's a website called Club Feroviar which does a monthly monitoring of the constructions for each construction site. Here's the table for the month of July.

As history was pretty unforgiving with us (we lived in a place where empires clashed), it's also highly inevitable that we find some historical relics. So the work stops, the archaeologists come (another field which is poorly financed) and they have to discharge the location.

And so, railway works for one single lot take 5 years, 7 years and so on...

[โ€“] benjhm@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I guess you are right about building railways in Romania, for example I remember a train crossing the (then) shiny new EU-funded rail bridge across the Danube from Vidin, then continuing at a walking pace towards Craiova. However, where i lived near Ottignies in Belgium it was no better - they demolished houses, build tunnels and bridges, then postponed laying the rail track for over a decade. As for projects getting delayed and costs inflated by archaeological digs - check out tunnels in London... And don't get lemmings (?) started on DB infrastructure... Maybe the emergency situation in Ukraine, oddly helps them to get some things moving faster ?

[โ€“] petrescatraian@libranet.de 2 points 1 week ago

@benjhm that railway was not modernized afaik. Only the bridge was new.

The network is still in poor condition and needs a massive overhaul in order to be relevant. Indeed, maybe the security risk posed by Russia will get things going.