Bucharest's first underground car parks, ready in 2 years

The first underground car parks built by the Bucharest City Hall (PMB) will become available in two years’ time at the earliest, with works due to start on the car park close to Gara de Nord (Northern Railway Station – 1,760 spaces) and in Piata Universitatii (University Square – 1,000 spaces at the most). “If all goes well, we expect works on the two car parks to start this year, with 15 such projects (for which we already have feasibility studies) to start shortly,” Gheorghe Udriste, director of the general department for infrastructure and public services within PMB said at the launch of “The Capital’s Car Park Strategy”. The overall investment is estimated at 311 million RON, i.e. around 84 million euros (at the National Bank of Romania’s Thursday exchange rate), which excludes the Gara de Nord and Universitatii Square projects. The 15 projects will be developed as public-private partnerships, with the winners to handle both the development and the management of the projects. Udriste specified that one option would be to set up “car park packages”, which will include several car parks, to be built along the North-South axis of Bucharest. Udriste estimated that there are 900,000 privately-owned cars on the streets of Bucharest each day, as well as 90,000 taxis, 100,000 heavy utility vehicles, whilst 2.5 million people use public transport.