I wish my leaders would build any transit at all

So some clarifications from a Bucharest citizen: 1. There are no high ways inside the city, except a 950m long chunk of A3 between two neighbourhoods (Andronache and Pipera) 2. Like him or not (mostly not) we wouldn't have a metro system of this size or even a metro system at all. The metro line M4 took 27 years to be fully opened, after it was allready build before 1989, and M5 took 9 year (it was suposed to be 3 years) for 7 km, 9 stations and one depot to be build and open.

I cheered the day they announced that the dictator and his wife had been retired........permanently.

us Americans watching from cities with unusable public transit 👁️👄👁️

thanks so much for covering this story! it's pretty cool to see my local transit system get covered by a youtuber from a country which transit i really appreciate and like. fortunately, at piata romana, there is an actual waiting area behind the station walls, where people usually wait for the metro,. but, the narrow platform and the curve of a station make it a pretty popular self-harm spot. additionally, there are 12 cracks in each wall, which were supposed to be alligned with the end doors of each car of the old rolling stock. nowadays, the new trains have the doors placed differently, so at rush hours, that small platform tends to get extremely crowded and kinda dangerous. platform screen doors are also impossible to place. it's a headache

And yet, the Chinese cities have some of the greatest public transport in the world. I guess there is no universal recipe.

I've been to Lisbon and their metro generally looks good, but I noticed some weird things, their escalators and generally walking routes are designed in a weird way that different crowds have to go thru other crowds that walks somewhere else, it was like some anthill and ofcourse, it's going on wrong side, but that's not that much about dictators, in some countries just still ride on the left side when it's track vehicle. I don't see these problems with crowds in Prague, we were lucky in this case.

Santiago, Chile recently built a six-lane tolled highway tunneled for six kilometers under or immediately beside the Mapocho River.

A wise man once said, "Smooth-brained dictator plus construction project equals dumb s#!t."

OMALAGAD BUCHAREST MENTIONED Okay time to give my insight The station Constantin Brancoveanu wasn't opened with the rest of the stations on M2. It had a similar fate to the Piata Romana station, but happier. According to a news interview I watched a few months back, the Constantin Brancoveanu station was completed, except for the stairs, when it was suddenly axed from the plans. In order to raise awareness, they imposed a slowdown when entering the station, to show that there was a station there. Also, a lot of the extensions (-M5 and the section from Parc Bazilescu to Straulesti) were made during communist times, they just weren't opened. The most notable example is the eastern part of M3, which opened in 2008 and fun fact is the only place where trains switch sides. In general though, the Bucharest Metro is actually very good. Would recommend visiting M4 while they still have the old rolling stock.

Great video as always, thanks sir.

The metro is not built UNDER the Dâmboviţa river, but under its right bank (basically under the street on the right side of the river). However, together with the metro works, works to regulate the river were also carried out. Under the river, we find the central sewers of Bucharest, which collect almost all the waste water in the city. There are, of course, crossing of the subway tunnels under Dâmboviţa where necessary; the most important is at Piaţa Unirii, where you have the street, the river (through narrow pipes), the sewer, than a huge multi-level metro station, with all the dispatchers for all metro lines + M3 and M2 + a connecting tunnel between those 2. Extensions of M3 and M4 were dug in 1988 - 1989. The works were abandoned and flooded completely, it took years to pump out all the water. Finally, Nicolae Grigorescu - Anghe Saligny (then called Linia de Centură) and 1 Mai - Parc Bazilescu (Parc Bazilescu was not in the communist planning, there was only the hole where the digging equipment was inserted; therefore you can notice it's thick pillars close to the edge of the tracks, as it was dug between the 2 existing tunnels) were open in 2008. Station Piaţa Romană was, when opened, equipped with a lot of "features" not presented on other station. For instance, the edge of the platform had pieces of fence with enough tolerance to not block the trains doors (keep in mind that driving was manually, not on ATO like today). People had to wait behind those huge pillars until the trains completely stopped and opened the doors; this rule was displayed on site, but I used the subway way to rarely in mid '90s to see if it was ever enforced. The signs and the platform fences were removed in 2002 when the new Bombardier Movia trains were put into service. These were a bit shorter than the older IVA trains, so the doors were stopping on the fences. The station also had an escalator from the platform directly to the exterior; as there was no turnstile on it (compared to all other exits), many were trying to descend on the escalator (which wasn't very fast) in order to travel for free. Some were caught by the guards, some were lucky. The M4 section Parc Bazilescu - Străuleşti and the entire M5 are completely new. The M2 extension to Tudor Arghezi involved doubling an existing track and building a station (the line is on ground level)... that line was and still is used to connect the subway network to the rail network. Also, please notice that lines M1-M4 were designed as a fast way to travel. Of course, the terminus stations were placed in highly industrial areas, as the subway was supposed to carry the workforce from the apartments areas to the industrial ones and back (and only workforce, that's why Piaţa Romană - where there is the University of Economics was omitted. Bucharest University had the "luck" to be in an are were an interchange was planned - eventually the new M5 will cross M2 there, the Polytechnic University was located in an industrial area, so it had metro access, while the University of Constructions still has no subway). Eventually, most of the industrial areas were turned into either office or residential areas, so the need for subway actually increased. M5 line, was, however, designed as an underground tram, with the same stations as the surface trolleybus it replaced (91). The effect is a very low loading factor... and the city had to introduce diesel buses on the surface, as the subway is not feasible for 2 - 3 stops journeys. Also, local traffic consisted of school kids (who had free surface transport, but not free subway transport at that time) and elder people, who have free surface transport (but not free subway). Also, the trains comes at 6 - 10 minutes (of course, with 12 - 20 minutes on the 2 extremities), a very bad interval.

@ 3:28. Sorry if you think that metro station is bland then I suggest you have an issue. I think that’s very stylish and minimalistic. I love the simplicity yet grand design.

3:18 Budapest metro stations that were built before 2000 have never been pieces of art. This picture shows a station that was refurbished in 2023 and before it looked nothing like on the picture.

Another fun fact about Piata Romana metro station: there is an escalator on the same level as the platform, leading up directly to the surface. If you're fast enough you can run down the escalator and ride the train for free.

I feel like a certain percentage of the population does like drowning in a certain type of tight tunnel

the piata romania station should be temporarily closed for expansion work some time in the future in my opinion

Very solid video, especially when information on the Bucharest metro system is quite scarce in other languages other than Romanian. Fun fact: during trials Ceausescu noted that the maximum speed of 80km/h was too high and ordered it reduced to 60km/h. The system ran like this for some years, however I was not able to find out when the speed returned to 80km/h. The reason why the M1 was laid down under the Dambovita river, at least from my understanding, is because it was the fastest way to connect two important factories of the city: Semanatoarea in the West and Timpuri Noi in the East. It was possible because the Dambovita river flows over a concrete pad all the way through the city. To my knowledge there was never any flooding due to the Dambovita river.

Tbf I think this is down to Ceaușescu just being an idiot. Plenty of Moscow has a great metro system. And as does most of China.

Really love to watch your content man, kee it up! Since i live in Bucharest, i would like to add a few things: 1. At Gara de Nord starion, there is an infamous curve where the trains screech like there's no tomorrow as they enter / leave the station. This is, like Piața Romană, caused by Ceaușescu's smooth brain since he said, and i can not make this up, "if i can walk this route, then so can the trains". Before he ordered that the station be built this way, it was already being built so the engineers had to cover up the old station to build the new. 2. The bucharest metro was, and still is, the only metro system in the world to begin testing with passengers on board. 3. Like another comment said, the eastern part of the m3 line has trains running on the opposite side. Because of this, at Nicolae Grigorescu station the west bound M3 trains have a dedicated platform that is above and of to the side of the other tracks so that the train gies above the other tracks to rejoin the "legacy system". Also, you can see them climbing up before entering the station. 5. Izvor is the only station that requires you to go under the tracks to switch directions. 6. Obor, along with Piata Victoriei and Piata Muncii (Hurmuzachi) have a car underpass bypassing the intersections. Although, Obor originally had a tram station fitted inside the underpass and was later converted into a metro station when they decided to extend the line to Dristor. Because of this, the platforms are a bit small and have Pillars in the middle of them. About future extensions: there is a planned extension of the m4 to the south, parallel to the M2, which would free up that line since its severely overcrouded. Another one is the M7, this one would create a SW - NE link, but it likely wont get build very soon.

Metro lines M1,2,3 build in Bucharest before 1989 was done by excavations from surface, they did not used TBM. So that their route followed existing boulevards , raill networks and Dambovita rivers. They did not made tunnels under existing buildings. I think this is good idea. M5 was done by using a TBM and many old buildings from the area of the tunel have been afected. Serious cracks in the structure of resistance of the buildings come up. I know some cases in Drumul Taberei neighborhood. Bucharest is in an area with seismic risk, earthquakes with over 7 Richter grades occured many times. I am afraid that buildings will collaps when a strong earthquake will occur

Weren't there plans to build a "private" metro line for the leaders between "the palace of the people" and their countryside residence?

Nice video! I am from the outskirts of Pavia which is a town 50km south of Milan and maybe I have an answer for your question about the metro along the river. Pavia is linked via the "Naviglio Pavese" which is a navigable canal that was projected by Leonardo and used until 1940s to ship sand and gravel into Milan, now it's primary use for agricolture as it's a prosperous area for rice cultivation. Once there existed a project of drying the canal, put the metro inside and covering it back to avoid excavation costs. I would say it would have been a useless project as parallel to the canals is running the Milan - Genoa railway, which finally got its local train every 30' to Milan in 2010 (even if sometimes the delay might be higher than the train frequency). Going back to the river I guess the risk of having a tunnel in the river and covering it with a slightly larger river bank does not sound me that bad, the impact for unexpected risks of a tunnel following the river rather than a tunnel crossing the river should be more or less the same. Probably worse is with a canal, in case of the Naviglio Pavese the projecting just ignored that people eat food and food crops grow only if they are watered with the water from the canal. - - - By the way I'm now very curious to know what are the features in place to prevent a failure of the tunnels under the rivers to paralyse the entire system as the amount of water that can potentially enter from a river is massive.

the current tunnel of the RER C in Paris from Austerlitz to Musee d’Orsay was constructed in 1900, right in the left bank of the Seine. So it doesn’t seem to be a huge problem the construction of a metro line in a similar situation.

When you know dictators that have made good public transportation...

The Piata Romana story is NOT the most interesting one, related to the unrealistic choices of Ceausescu couple. From my point of view, the most interesting and dangerous changes happened at the Gara De Nord metro station. Initially, over there the plan was to have 2 overlapped end-stations where the M1 and the 'old' M3 (which became a part of M1) should have ended. The station structure was built with M3 (Pantelimon - Gara de Nord upper platform) over M1 (Republica - Piata Unirii - Eroilor - Gara de Nord lower platform). When Ceausescu visited one day to inspect the station he said: "what is this? Why should the lines end here? Comrades, let the trains pass through." The problem was that the station was nearly built and there was no way to connect it from the part where it ended (south-eastern part of the station). Additionally, the Piata Victoriei station was impossible to connect from the vest over a tunnel from the eastern part of Gara De Nord, because it was placed much to the west, from the current placement, meaning that they were nearly parallel to one another. They started an attempt to build a tunnel, sacrificing a branch line, and demolishing 10-12 building over the Calea Grivitei street but when Ceausescu heard about this, he became very pissed about it. "Comrades, do you want to tear down the whole city? Go with the tunnel under the Polizu Street, not Calea Grivitei". And so started the crazy changes in the area: 1) They demolished other buildings around the Polizu Street. 2) They moved the Gara de Nord station to the vest by tens of meters in order to allow 3) an insanely tight curve to the north from the eastern side of Gara de Nord station that only allows the trains to enter at 25-30 km/h while they screech the wheels. They also filled the lover part of the Gara de Nord station (M1, which was supposed to receive trains from Piata Victoriei over a tunnel coming from north-west) with dirt and sealed it off. The tunnels that were build from the north-west part of the station were abandoned and partially destroyed in order to bring the trains up from the lover level of the tunnel (M1) to the level of the new platform (M3) 4) They moved the Piata VIctoriei 2 station as much as possible to the east and changed the tunnel to another tight curve to the south in order to connect it to the south-eastern entrance from the Gara de Nord station. Because of this the project was delayed quite some time. There are also some abandoned tunnels over there, between the actual Gara de Nord and Basarab station. A branch line at Crangasi that was supposed to be used as part of this, became useless. There's also an urban legend that during the chaos of changing the tunnels, they forgot an IVA test train into a tunnel that was sealed off from the main lines. For anyone interested I can provide documentation (in Romanian languages that can be translated with Google translate) and pictures about these insane changes.

3:13 Well, Prague metro stations are extremely ugly, compared to Bucharest ones. You showed maybe the only interesting thing in the whole Prague metro system -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ the preserved medieval ruins at Můstek. Except Anděl, every single station is ugly. Also Bucharest metro system is one of the larger ones in the eastern block. I don't see anything bad on its planning and construction. For example, in New York City, various hotels or buildings even requested private metro stations, when they've heard, that the metro was going to be built under their properties.

Looks like those metro trains had Data 1300 headlights.

Warsaw has metro line along river also. Distance can be different.

hey, thanks for using my pic in the thumbnail :D i took it in 2019 when i had spare time to waste after highschool classes, its the oldest multiple unit still in service in Bucharest (cars 003-004) which were part of a pre-production batch from 1978-1980. its nearing up 50 years in service, something that i imagine even the original designers didnt think of. the first metro proposal was made in 1953 which was fully designed by the Soviets but it was way too expensive and only in the early 1970s they had the resources to build it (surface public transport was also very overcrowded). the expansion thing is bullshit btw, most of the network was built between 1975 and 1990, nowdays they are barely able to complete one segment of a new line. so who knows how fast the network will expand (i will be long dead by the time they will finish line M6 probably). line M1 was initially built this way because it linked the city center with two major factories (Semănătoarea and Timpuri Noi), after some time thru the first half in the 1980s the tram line that went on the other bank of the river was dismantled (something that im bringing up later). placing it next to the river is a strange choice though but they were able to isolate it from the river im pretty sure. you can see satelite images of the construction works on fostulbucuresti. you can even see in 1980 how they diverted the river next to the old communal slaughterhouse. Gara de Nord's station story is worse than the one at Piața Romană, but of course the latter is much more publicised cus of how sensationalised it was in the local mass media and probably got translated and popularised abroad. for Gara de Nord, the original plan from 1981 was for a regular through station, but in 1983 they decided to build a double-deck terminus station, with the lower level for the line from Crângași (where it would split forming a semi-circular line going to Dristor across the south of Bucharest), with the upper level for the line for Pantelimon. construction began in early 1984 but halfway though, Ceaușescu decided to merge those two lines to make line M1 (at the time M3) and make this a through station again (some say lobbying from residents on Nicolae Titulescu Avenue helped because their street somehow took 6 years to rebuild), then the construction workers began to demolish houses in a triangle between Polizu Street, Griviței Avenue and Buzești Street, only for Ceaușescu to scold them and to route the metro line under Polizu Street. the opening was delayed from August 1986 to December 1987. thats why Gara de Nord station is shifted 20 meters westwards (and has a low celling for those said 20 meters), thats why theres a tight curve at the Eastern end of the station, and thats why there are sidings where the tunnel was meant to be. people used to do urban exploration in those abandoned tunnels but i think they havent done it that much since. and if that wasnt enough, line M3 (now M1) was redirected from Pantelimon to Dristor at the same time due to a lack of funding. it will be five billion years till Pantelimon will get its own metro line. the last irritating thing is that Ceaușescu used the metro as an excuse to mutilate above-ground electric public transport. when line M2 was built, it effectively got rid of all trolleybuses running from North to South in the middle of 1985, and also several years after the metro in Militari was built, the tram tracks were dismantled and relocated southwards in Drumul Taberei in early 1987 (after having been rebuilt thru the summer of 1986). sadly this practice still continues today, the trolleybuses in Drumul Taberei were partially removed in 2012 owing to the metro and never placed back, and in 2015 the tram going to the former Laromet factory was temporarily closed, only for the tracks to be dismantled in 2019. same old thinking from 30+ years ago just because Ceaușescu was bothered by the fact that there were competeing forms of transport. and it was also a masked way to make public transport more expensive, as in the 1980s trams and trolleybuses were less than one leu, the metro ticket cost one leu for one trip, and minibuses cost around... five lei...

0:04 atleast Bucharest has a finished ring road 😀

still better in terms of architecture than NYC subway

5:05 for a sec I thought the fat students were the reason for the narrow built platforms so that they'd have to lose weight LOL

Grand pieces of architecture my ass. Communist era Budapest Metros were as utalitarian as one can get. The picture shown in the video is the result of the recent revamp of the M3 line

London's Circle and District Line tunnels are basically built along the banks of the River Thames. While that station story is rather dumb, on the plus side, at least they actually got something built. Which is more than can be said for many other cities.

we need more metro and street cars

Next episode Trolly bus in Soviet union

Democratic Sweden manages to pour money into rotten infrastructure projects. The Gothenburg metro under construction will be almost completely useless when it is finished, currently half built, now years behind schedule and out of money half-way through. The proposal was thrown out in a referendum but it went ahead anyway. It has been known for 400 years that the city stands on unstable and waterlogged ground ie totally unsuitable for tunnelling.

The ceausescus did not plan anything. Romania had some great urban planners during communist times and they still do, the difference is that transit projects back then were getting built much more efficiently because of how centralized everything was. Now it takes years and years to just finance and approve any new metro lines, plus they get built super slowly by private companies instead of state owned enterpises. The m2 is the most used line of the metro to this day. Everything about the old bucharest lines is great, besides the famous story of the piata romana which is indeed shameful. If you find it shocking that we have a metro parallel to a river, wait until you find out the one in budapest goes under the danube.

Is this a reupload?

Looks a bit better than a half of tne NY stations anyways...

Hitler and Stalin: "Hold our beers!“

Yeah. I’m from Romania and living abroad in a western country with a less efficient subway system based on a star infrastructure. If I want to go from A to B, I often need to cross the city center only because there is no ring connection. Bucharest has such a connection. Stop making propaganda out of anything. Either was the dictator in Romania not so bad or there are engineers that are worse than dictators, which doesn’t put the right light on western world either.

Book-her-est

Bro: I love all the Fuckery

Next episode Soviet mikrodistric vs USA suburbia

I remember the 1970s and 80s when US President after President treated the Ceausescus like royalty because of Romania's relative independence from Moscow. Yes, relative is the operative word there. Ceausescu occasionally refused to go along with some decree from Moscow, had diplomatic relations with Israel, etc., etc., etc. So the West threw money at him, and he proceeded to redesign Bucharest according to some grand vision of his. Then, he turned on a dime and decided to pay all the money back, causing immense hardship to the Romanian people. I can imagine that Ceausescu wanted the metro to appear very modern unlike the palatial design of the Moscow metro system. Unlike his Palatul Poporului, many of the new buildings did look futuristic.

What's wrong with building metro lines between the residential and the industrial districts or under the busiest streets? It should be a dictator to understand this?

neither should U.S. politicians 😂😂

Ahh just another video with AI voiceover Bloopers: oh wait....😂

Why were Americans and communist countries except china so bad at metro 🚇 trains?

Capitalist also can give you bland (cost effective 😊) designs.

In the worst Case you'll get a one-way Ride into the Camps.

"Dealt with" is a nice euphemism for "killed after being sentenced in a laughably rigged drumhead court martial by an illegitimate, self-proclaimed authority"

I you want to know what happened actually to Romania, watch Hakim's video from ~2 weeks ago _Romania, 1989: An African Coup In Europe_

I know this station because I passed so much through this station. It's a really dangerous station especially if someone has a wheelchair. Ceaușescu did pretty much bad things such as the affromentioned station and the Centrul Civic with Casa Poporului (today the Parliament Building). Ceaușescu made the worst metro planning ever, that's why public transit in Bucharest is so c****y. I'm saying it from the perspective of a Romanian Furry that lives in Germany! About Ceaușescu's urban planning we can also find some positives as well, like the commie blocks at the city's outskirts, which can be pretty similar to Jižni Město in the Czech Republic

Have you ever been to bucharest? Your claims for being a stupid plan is are stupid in themselves. And the architecture is besutiful, take a look on the m4 or m5 lines… horrible “design”