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Romania

TRANSPORTATION AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS

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Figure 5. Transportation System, 1982

Railroads

The basic structure of the national railroad network had been completed by the outbreak of World War II, when the total system length was 9,900 kilometers. In 1986 the network had a combined length of 11,221 kilometers, including 10,755 kilometers of 1,435- meter standard-gauge, 421 kilometers of narrow-gauge, and 45 kilometers of broad-gauge track; about 3,060 kilometers of route had been double-tracked; and 3,328 kilometers of track had been electrified--roughly 30 percent of the system (see fig. 5). The Thirteenth Party Congress of the PCR called for diverting freight from the highway system onto the railroads and increasing the volume of rail transport by 10 to 13 percent during the 1986-90 period. In 1984 the railroads carried 289.3 million metric tons, as compared with 417.7 million metric tons transported by the highways. Measured in ton-kilometers, however, railroads hauled more than ten times as much freight as the highways (75.2 billion and 7.3 billion metric ton-kilometers respectively).

Two important railroad construction projects completed in the 1980s were the Vīlcele-Rīmnicu Vīlcea line, which connected the Pitesti-Curtea de Arges mainline with the Piatra Olt-Podul Olt mainline and shortened the distance to Transylvania by 100 kilometers, and the Borcea-Cernavoda line (part of the North-- South Trans-European System), which tripled the traffic capacity of the Bucharest-Dobruja-Constanta route. These projects required building some of the longest bridges, viaducts, and tunnels in the country. Construction of the Bucharest subway system was another major investment in rail transportation during the 1980s.

Data as of July 1989