Motorway or expressway? Big difference!

Recently, in Romania, the construction costs of expressways are almost the same as the construction costs of highways, despite the fact that in principle expressways would be cheaper. This can be explained by the fact that the country only recently began to seriously deal with the construction of expressways as an alternative to highways. According to Gabriel Budescu, the president of the National Association of Road Investments (CNIR), nowadays it costs the same to build an expressway as a highway. CNIR is the recently established new authority that will take over future projects from the company responsible for road infrastructure (CNAIR), which manages existing roads. CNIR's first project is the Focșani-Brăila expressway, the cost of which is about 14 million euros per kilometer, which already means highway costs. According to Budescu, the classification of the projects is decided during the assessment of the price-value ratio, expected turnover and costs. In addition, he noted that the norms for expressways should be amended, since according to the current regulations, the 1.5-meter curb on expressways is not optimal.