Affordable parking plans for Bucharest stall

Bucharest drivers pay an average of EUR 100 per month to park their vehicles, or 28 percent of an average monthly salary, more even than a London motorist who allocates 26 percent of a EUR 2,924 salary, according to the real estate advisory company Colliers International. Despite the prohibitive costs, more than 1.1 million cars are squeezed into the limited number of parking spaces in the Romanian capital.

Andreea Ceasar

According to the Bucharest Municipality Parking Strategy drawn up in 2008 by Asesores de Infraestructuras, the demand for underground parking spaces will be as much as 30,000 in 2011, and 90,000 by 2020. The study underlines that 9,000 underground parking spaces must be built per year to meet the growing demand.

Two years ago at least 20 large parking projects were pending, but so far only five major underground spaces totaling fewer than 3,000 units are underway.
They are intended to be developed through public-private partnerships (PPP), and will be located in the most congested areas.

The Walter Maracineanu project is the smallest, with 241 spaces, followed by Dorobanti with 254, Edgar Quinter-University (380), Charles de Gaulle
(601) and Alba Iulia, which should have a 1,500-space parking facility in two years.

The only project that has been started is the one in the University area, whose concessioner, a Spanish joint venture between TerraTest Cimentaciones, Alius Inversiones and Simex, plans to invest EUR 13.4 million in the three-level parking lot and has 36 years to earn its investment back and post a profit.
The other four PPPs will have a total cost of EUR 139 million, should the necessary wealthy investors be found.

As the demand is great and other real estate investments are being postponed, building a car park seems an appropriate solution. Dragos Dragoteanu, the owner of the real estate company
Euroest, decided to put to use the expensive land plots he had acquired in the middle of the capital.

The businessman invested EUR 150,000 in a plot of land near Victoria Square, adapting it to make it suitable for parking, and planned another in Matache Square. However, due to the building works along Bulevardul Uranus the project was postponed.
“There are one million cars in Bucharest and a need for over 100,000 parking spaces, but it is not profitable to invest in a multi-storey car park, as it returns in 20, 30 years,” said Dragoteanu, whose plans for building car parks were a response to the financial crisis. Currently, he charges drivers EUR 3 per hour, ten times more than the cost of public parking, and his facility has an occupancy rate of 60 percent.

“It is profitable to build multi-level structures only through PPPs, but in Romania such partnerships are in fact just compromises,” said Dragoteanu.
And while construction works and partnerships are barely moving forward, affordable parking spaces seem as far away as ever.