[NEWS] Bucharest: cycling encouraged

The Bucharest mayor’s office implements initiatives to encourage cycling

Bucharest City Hall has extended a bicycle path in the central area up to the size of 2.8 km. Along with this improvement, a panel that counts how many cyclists use the track every day was installed. We could see that it is used constantly, for example 11 bicycles and 18 scooters passed in a 10 minute interval. Thus, in January and February 2020, according to the information panel, 28,000 cyclists used the bicycle lanes. We must keep in mind that the registered number cannot take into account the people who used the track in other areas, but did not go through the sensors. The cycling traffic monitoring system has been operating for the past year and continues to function. In the first month of this year, it was used by over 14,000 travelers. In addition to the annual number of passengers, the panel also shows the daily number of cyclists, air temperature, date and time. However, the system, in this version has a disadvantage: it does not count other people who use alternative means of transport: those on scooters (electrics or classics), those on rollers or on skateboards. As this measure shows that many residents of the city use bicycles as a mean of transport, the City Hall is working to expand this bike path on two sections.

The municipality is also planning the configuration of 3 new routes for cyclists, which will include the central and adjacent areas, where traffic is congested, and pollution has become a problem. These new routes under construction will have a total length of about 12 kilometers and will be put into circulation this year according to the city hall employee’s statements. Thus, these measures are tried on the one hand to reduce the level of pollution caused by traveling by personal vehicles and, on the other hand, to decongest the extremely congested traffic in the central part of the city.