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RBT: What do you think of the passenger road transport in Romania?
Dragos Anastasiu: I do not think that routes such as Bucharest-Madrid may survive. I would rather say that the road transport on routes as Bucharest-Sophia, Bucharest-Prague, and Bucharest-Munich will develop. And that will happen not only with the capital, but also with the smaller towns, with no airports. I believe that touring transport will be on a great rise.
RBT: Is the road passenger transport a lucrative business?
D.A.: Not quite, at the moment. It is a great responsibility area, which requires lot of energy and which has a very low and insecure margin of profit.
RBT: What would be the greatest threat to the passenger road transport: a sudden CFR Calatori change for the better or an aerial operators’ expansion?
D.A.: With a view to CFR Calatori… I can’t foresee any sudden change for the better in the next 5 years. On the contrary, aerial operators will be greater competitors to passenger road transport. And perhaps there will be a more severe competition between road operators in terms of international transport, as they might think there is an easy-going situation in Europe and they will try to enter these routes which we have been settling by now.
TRENDS
National Prognosis Commission: River freight is to boom the next two years
The average annual growth of the inland navigable ways will double in 2007-2009 period compared to the 2001-2006 intervals, according to the National Prognosis Commission (CNP for short in Romanian) quarterly bulletin. The annual average growth rate of the river freight is estimated at 4, 6% in the 2007-2009 interval and there is hope that the total volume will get up to 17,1 million tons a year, at the end of the interval.
With a view to passenger river transport, CNP bulletin points at the extremely low level of current traffic: only 1% of all the passengers revert to river area (in comparison, in the freight case, river transport has a 4% share). In spite of all that, passenger river service will have an even greater growth than that of freight: the average annual growth of the passengers’ number is estimated at 8,2% in 2007-2009, compared to 6,1% in years 2001 to 2006.
