Romania types of roads · Types of roads in Romania
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Types of roads in Romania
Types of roads in Romania
Motorways (autostrada)
A1 - planned to connect Bucharest with cities in southern Transylvania and then proceed to the western border; the only part completed so far is the 126 km long stretch between Bucharest and Piteşti opened in 1973. Arad - Timişoara is under construction, and should be opened by end of 2011.
A2 - by 2010 is expected to link Bucharest with the Black Sea port of Constanta; for now, out of the total 225 km length, only the Bucharest - Cernavodă segment (about 150 km) is completed. Cernavoda - Constanţa is expected to be completed in early 2011.
Although no segment is yet completed the main motorway will be:
A3 - is supposed to cross Transylvania diagonally from west to east and then head south to Bucharest. The Bors - Brasov segment, also called the Transylvania Motorway , is currently the largest road project in Europe; it will connect the Hungarian / Romanian border with Oradea, Zalau, Cluj-Napoca, Targu Mures, Sighisoara and Brasov. Bucharest-Braşov is also under construction, but the first segment will be completed at the earliest in 2011. The Cluj-Napoca - Turda leg opened in December 2009, and in 2010 it will continue to Câmpia Turzii. Its only utility now is as bypass for Cluj and Turda for motorists going from Oradea to Braşov. The temporary Turda interchange is a bit difficult to use.
The speed limit on motorways is 130 km/h.
Expressways (drum expres) - Basically non-grade separated/semi-grade separated dual carriageway. The only completed expressways are the 60 km long Bucharest - Giurgiu (DN 5) road, The Ploiesti Bypass (DN 1), the Cluj East bypass, the Bucharest - Henri Coanda International Airport stretch of the DN 1 (which is grade-separated). The speed limit on expressways is 100 km/h.
National roads (drum national). In the absence of motorways the national roads remain the most important element of the Romanian road system, as they connect the main cities in the country. Thanks to recent investments most of them are in reasonable condition - most of the trunk network being rehabilitated recently. Many have 4 non-separate lanes near cities, some have 3 or 4 non-separate lanes throughout (such as Bucharest-Comarnic and a large part of E85) but many have only two lanes - one per traffic direction (a notable example is DN1 Câmpina-Braşov - the 100 km mountain stretch can take 3-5 hours to cross during weekends and holidays. The speed limit on national roads is 100 km/h.
Other roads - county (drum judetean) and rural (drum comunal) roads are owned and maintained by either regional or local authorities. These roads mainly link trunk roads with very small towns or villages - few running for more than 30-40 km. The situation of county roads is highly dependent on each of the counties involved - while in Ilfov or Constanta, these roads are of decent-to-high quality, in other regions such roads are in a poor to very poor condition compared with national roads. Rural roads are of even shorter nature (under 10 km), some of them being one lane of traffic only, others being covered in gravel only. The speed limit on these roads is 90 km/h.
Note that for ALL roads, when in a city, town or village, the speed limit is 50 km/h (unless clearly otherwise posted). As such, driving a National Road becomes a constant accelerate-and-brake adventure, one having to be constantly spotting speed limit signs, city limit markers andthe behavior of other drivers.
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Romania Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.