Abstract:

Due to the fact that 75% of the European Union population lives in urban areas, the urban transport represents an important component of the demand for mobility. At the same time, the urban environment presents the greatest challenges to transport sustainability. That is why this paper has chosen interurban and international passenger transport as a point of reference. The general objective regarding transport according to the Strategy for Sustainable Transportation for 2007-2013 and 2020-2030 elaborated by the Romanian Ministry of Transport represents the balanced development of the national transport system that will provide modern and sustainable transport infrastructure and services, a sustainable development of the economy and the improvement of the quality of life. The macroeconomic indicators that characterize the Romanian transport sector (the production of road transportation means, the real net investment in the transport activity, the gross average earnings from road transports, passengers' journey, and so on) were taken from the Statistical Yearbook of Romania published by the National Institute of Statistics, for the period 2001-2017. In the paper, along with simple methods of characterizing the evolution of passenger transportation services in Romania, we also used analytical methods, the method of regression and statistical correlation. Regarding the results of the study we can conclude that one of the major problems of Romania with a significant negative impact on the economic and social state of the country is the lack of a satisfactory network of fast road transportation (motorways and express roads). Another result of the study pointed out that the Romanian motorization level is still relatively low, which means that this is expected to increase significantly in the future.