The great development phases of the humankind have been marked by sacrifices and infliction for those trying to do something good for their siblings. The mere introduction of fire in the everyday life remained in the mind of ancient Greeks as an ordeal for the humankind. For losing monopoly on fire, the angry gods punished the titan Prometheus, by binding him on a rock in Caucasus and sending each day an eagle to feed on his liver. Prometheus stoically resisted this form of torture until the day he was freed by another famous hero, Heracles.
By extrapolation, the myth of Prometheus could apply with no problem to the trauma experienced by the (urban and extra-urban) railway transport. In order to honour the public transport congress organised by UITP in Geneva, our team has prepared a report on the railway transport market in the urban environment of the Wider Black Sea Area. Looking at the map of the area, we can see a network of cities which are still operating tram and underground networks, some plans also existing for their extension.
Nevertheless, the financial crisis and the economy reorganisation experienced by most of the WBSA countries for approximately 25 years have their say on the railway transport industry. Considered by certain politicians as remainings of the communist past and symbols of the lack of individual expression, all these combined with the negative effects on the city, the tram networks in many cities have been closed or reduced to unusable sizes, and the underground network construction/extension projects have remained only on paper. Just like Prometheus, the mode of transport the most environmentally friendly is hacked each day and is the victim of a lack of communication and presentation of the new infrastructure construction and operation solutions combined with the new concepts of vehicles (city friendly, silent, ensuring flexible transport capacities etc).
The negative experience of the cities in the Democratic West is also regretted under the pressure of the great institutional financers which, seeking for the short term financial balance, ignore the social and economic impact at urban and national level. The race for the street reconstruction in order to create space for individual vehicles or for the construction of high-speed interurban roads condemns the societies from Central Europe to Central Asia to the dissipation of resources by the works for the destruction of the existing networks, the increase of the unemployment rate among the employees from the transport sector and other initiatives developed around the old transport networks, subsequently combined with the high costs of road congestion, the repurchase of spaces for the construction of new networks (as it happens already in the West).
All the studies on WBSA demography indicate an overall increase of the urbanisation, which also implies the provision of high quality public transport services. Is only a modern Heracles (over-congestion of traffic arteries) capable to free public transport?
by Ştefan Roşeanu
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