Romania's oldest motorway paved with "ditches" and "craters"

Romania's first motorway and the main route connecting Bucharest with Western Europe appears to be in permanent need of rehabilitation. Every few months, traffic needs to be restricted on certain sections because of holes in the road or because of "ditches" dug on the first lane by lorries, writes Business Construct magazine.

Works on the Bucureşti-Piteşti Motorway, also called A1, began in 1967 and were finalised in 1972. In other words, using the technology of the '70s, a 106-kilometre Motorway was finalised in five years' time. The Americans at Bechtel have just "celebrated" six years since works started on the Transilvania motorway, but they can only "boast" 42 finalised kilometres and have other sections where works are under way. The A1 motorway does not resemble at all a European motorway, with representatives of transportation companies saying this is in fact true of the entire road infrastructure in Romania, with the A1 being no different from the other roads.
Romania currently has only 321.3 kilometres of motorway, built over more than 40 years. Other sections are set to be completed by 2012, but nobody trusts the figures given by the Transportation Ministry any more.