I noticed something this morning while dropping Viorica off on her way to work. It was nothing spectacular: no new shopping centre, no enormous construction project and certainly nothing that would normally justify stopping to take photographs. The pavement around one of the bus stops had been renovated. More importantly, the bus-stop area itself had been included in the work, and when I looked further along the avenue I realised that this was not an isolated patch. A much longer section of the pedestrian infrastructure was being replaced.
This is one of those small changes that I probably would not have noticed as a visitor. Now that I live here and repeatedly drive along the same streets, however, I see Chișinău changing in increments. A road is resurfaced. A kerb disappears and comes back new. An old stretch of asphalt pavement is removed. A bus stop is rebuilt. A few days later, what had looked tired and unmistakably inherited from another era suddenly looks considerably more modern.
I am positively impressed.
Not just the roads
I have written before about the state of Chișinău's roads, so it is only fair that I also record the improvements when I see them. The municipality has been resurfacing and rehabilitating important roads, but what interests me now is that the work is visibly extending beyond the carriageway. Pavements, pedestrian accesses, kerbs, public-transport waiting areas, parking arrangements and other pieces of the streetscape are also being tackled.
The old pedestrian surfaces in many parts of the city are not difficult to recognise. There are stretches of ageing asphalt, old concrete slabs, damaged kerbs and surfaces that have accumulated decades of repairs. They are functional in the broadest sense of the word, but they are hardly pleasant. They also become considerably less amusing once winter arrives and snow, water and ice begin interacting with every crack and uneven surface.
The replacements I have been seeing are very different. New concrete kerbs define the edges properly, while pedestrian areas are increasingly being finished with interlocking paving blocks, often in warm beige, ochre and related tones. It is a relatively simple material change, but visually it makes an enormous difference. Instead of looking like the leftover margin beside the road, the pavement begins to look as though somebody actually designed it as part of the street.
After noticing the work this morning, I checked whether my impression was simply the result of repeatedly encountering a few construction sites. It is not. Chișinău City Hall's own project records show a much broader programme of pedestrian and road infrastructure improvements. Dacia Boulevard alone has undergone successive interventions involving the carriageway, pavements, cycle lanes, parking, lighting, green spaces, access stairs, underpasses and public-transport waiting stations. Nearby streets in Botanica have also been receiving new or reconstructed pavements.
In other words, I am not imagining a pattern because I happened to drive past three piles of paving stones.
Watching the city change on the way out
I first became particularly aware of this while driving out of Chișinău along the route that eventually connects with the E584. I had been watching substantial sections of the old pedestrian infrastructure being removed, sometimes with machinery considerably larger than I would normally associate with fixing a pavement. Old surfaces disappeared, kerbs were lifted out and new concrete elements began appearing behind them. Then came the new pedestrian surface.
What caught my attention was the pace. I often drive the same routes at roughly the same times, so changes are easy to spot. One day there is old asphalt. Then the surface has been stripped. Soon afterwards there are new kerbs, prepared foundations and paving. I have had the distinct impression that some of this work is also being carried out at night, when traffic is lower, because occasionally I return to a section of road and find much more has changed than I expected since the previous day.
I cannot confirm that there is a formal municipal policy of working through the night on these particular sections, so I will leave that as what it is: my observation from repeatedly driving around the city. But somebody is certainly getting through the work.
There is also an obvious calendar hanging over everything now. We are in the middle of September. Moldova does not provide road builders with twelve comfortable months of construction weather. Winter will arrive, temperatures will fall, and eventually there will be frost, ice and snow. I therefore suspect that there is considerable pressure to complete exposed work while conditions remain suitable. Whether that is the municipality's explicit deadline or simply my interpretation, the activity certainly feels urgent.
Then, inevitably, I think about Germany
This is where my German comparison becomes difficult to avoid. I lived in Germany long enough to become accustomed to roadworks that seemed capable of becoming permanent geographical features. Barriers appeared, lanes disappeared, temporary traffic lights arrived, and after enough months one simply accepted the construction site as part of the neighbourhood.
Seeing sections of Chișinău apparently stripped and rebuilt at this pace inevitably makes me ask why similar work can feel so painfully slow in Germany.
My first emotional answer is not especially charitable. It is tempting to say that the German system is simply incompetent, or even to wonder whether the contractual and financial structure somehow rewards everybody for taking as long as possible. Having checked before putting that accusation into writing, however, I cannot substantiate the latter idea, and the reality behind the former is more complicated.
Germany itself acknowledges the problem. The Federal Ministry of Transport describes road infrastructure delivery as a complex process involving needs assessment, planning, financing, land acquisition, approval procedures, procurement and finally construction. For larger projects, the ministry says that the complete process can take years or even decades depending on technical, legal and environmental requirements. In July this year, the federal government adopted further legislation specifically intended to accelerate important infrastructure planning and construction.
That does not mean Germany should simply be excused. A process can have legitimate safeguards and still be unnecessarily cumbersome. Indeed, the German government's own efforts to accelerate infrastructure projects are effectively an admission that the present system is not delivering quickly enough. The interesting question is therefore not whether Moldova has discovered that regulations are unnecessary, but whether Germany has accumulated so much process around implementation that the process itself has become part of the infrastructure problem.
There is also an important limitation to my comparison. I am watching relatively straightforward urban rehabilitation work in Chișinău and comparing the visible speed with my broader experience of German construction. Replacing a pavement is not the same engineering, legal or administrative problem as building a motorway, bridge or railway. Germany can obviously resurface a pavement without spending twenty years conducting a planning procedure.
Still, as somebody standing beside the finished pavement rather than inside the procurement department, the contrast can sometimes be striking.
Small infrastructure matters
There is a larger reason why I find these apparently mundane works encouraging. Cities are experienced mostly through ordinary infrastructure. Grand projects attract attention, but the quality of daily life is determined much more often by the pavement between your home and the bus stop, whether you can push a pram or wheelchair across a junction, whether rainwater collects where you need to walk, whether the bus waiting area is usable and whether you can cross a road without negotiating broken asphalt and a high kerb.
Chișinău City Hall's records show that some recent projects explicitly include lowered kerbs, tactile paving for visually impaired pedestrians, cycle infrastructure, public-transport waiting areas, lighting and urban furniture alongside the basic pavement work. That is much closer to treating the street as a complete public space rather than simply concentrating on the strip of asphalt used by cars.
I do not want to exaggerate the transformation. Chișinău still has plenty of roads and pavements requiring serious attention, and anyone driving around the city for a few hours will have no difficulty finding them. There are places where the infrastructure remains poor, and replacing paving blocks does not solve every transport or urban-planning problem.
But progress does not become less real merely because the job is unfinished.
For me, that is perhaps the most interesting part of living here rather than merely visiting. I am seeing the changes incrementally. The bus stop I passed last week is different this week. A pavement I remember as old asphalt becomes paving stones. A road that annoyed me for months is resurfaced. The city is not transformed overnight, but enough things are happening that I am beginning to notice the cumulative effect.
This morning it was just a bus stop.
But it was a very nice new bus stop with a very nice new pavement.
And after years of complaining about infrastructure elsewhere, I think it is only fair to notice when somebody appears to be getting on with the job.
Public information about Chișinău's infrastructure projects was checked against material published by Chișinău City Hall. The discussion of German road-project procedures and efforts to accelerate infrastructure delivery was checked against information published by Germany's Federal Ministry of Transport. Where I describe the apparent speed, overnight working or pressure to complete work before winter, these remain my personal observations and interpretations rather than claims of an officially stated municipal policy. The opinions and conclusions presented here remain my own.
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