A reversal of the situation for those in the apartments. The announcement only came today, May 4: I didn’t promise. Nicusor Dan stated that in the 2020 campaign he did not say that he would solve the heating problem, but only promised to improve it.
Nicușor Dan: I did not promise to solve the heating problem in Bucharest
On Prima TV, Nicușor Dan explained that in the 2020 election campaign he did not promise to solve the heating problem on the spot, but only promised to improve the situation. Which, he claims, happened. He pointed out that this winter the operating percentage in the parameters was on average 99%, that is, in most cases the apartments had heat. He noted that this is a significant improvement over previous winters.
“I did not make this promise”, replied the mayor of the capital.
Reminding him of a poster from the election campaign four years ago that said that the citizens of Bucharest will have hot water from the next day, Nicusor Dan replied:
“I saw him. My colleagues from the USR campaign did not consult me. And I, on the other hand, in the 2020 campaign, I said because it was easy to promise, but I didn’t do it and I said I don’t promise that we’ll solve it on the spot because it’s not possible, but I promise that we’ll improve what we did”, declared Nicusor Dan.
He also explained what it means that he “improved”:
“If we take the degree of satisfaction, for example, this winter we had an average of 99% functioning in the parameters. That is, when one apartment did not have it, 99 did, much more than in past winters. If we take another indicator, this is the most relevant indicator, how much water you lose in the ground. Gabriela Firea took a quantity and increased it by about 40-50% and we managed to decrease it by 20%. We did not decrease it by 40-50% to return to the amount of 2016, but at least we are in the right direction. I changed 110 kilometers in three years, more than they did in 12 years. We proposed 50 per year and only in 2023 did we manage to reach 50 per year!”
“This year we will have 70, I am convinced, because we currently have 15 large construction sites”, added Nicuşor Dan.
Regarding solving the heating problem by the end of his second term, if he is re-elected, the mayor assured that “it will get better and better”.
“We’re about at…, we’re only talking about the main network, that’s where the big breakdowns are, we’re at 200 and a bit out of 1,000 changed, but at the end of the next mandate we’ll be at 500 out of 1,000 and that means that the 500 are of course elected there where we know that there are most breakdowns, which means that hot water and heat will no longer be a problem. It will keep getting better. And, again, a relevant issue is that in all the surveys until last year, hot water and heat were in first place, now it is in third or fourth place”, Nicuşor Dan also transmitted.
The traffic problem remains
He specified that the problem of traffic is in the first place in the dissatisfaction of the citizens of Bucharest. Dan never specified that he didn’t solve this issue, but it didn’t get worse either. He explained that the source of the traffic was real estate development and there were prospects that the situation would worsen. He pointed out that the construction of dense blocks of flats created difficulties for residents to drive on the streets of their neighborhoods, which led to the congestion of the main boulevards.
He also mentioned that new blocks of flats did not have enough schools and kindergartens, so parents had to transport their children by car. He explained that this imbalance has been perpetuated for two decades and that there is no magic solution to fix it. Nicușor Dan stated that one of the good things they did was to stop, to a certain extent, this trend, and to improve public transport, which led to a 40% increase in the number of Bucharest residents I use this means of transport.
