You leave DN1 through a roundabout, then thread between orange plastic posts onto a rising ramp. The asphalt is still coal-black, and the white lane markings haven't had time to wear. The first sign past the ramp is a 50 km/h speed limit.
In June, I called this road "an Instagram-ready promise": six kilometers, nearly finished, seen from the air beside a line of cars that wasn't moving. The official deadlines didn't match. The Prahova County Council was saying August 2026, while CESTRIN, the project-tracking portal of the national road company, CNAIR, listed December 2027 — a date the contractor later explained as the end of the financing period, not the deadline for finishing the work. The road opened on Thursday, Oct. 1, at 2 p.m., a month after the August target.
This piece is about what you see from the lane toward Sinaia. What the bypass changes for traffic in the Prahova Valley can't be measured in a single drive.
Along the railway
The first stretch runs beneath a concrete wall poured into the hillside, stamped with the contractor's logo. A blue sign reads Brașov 77, Sinaia 16. Ahead, the mountains.
Then the road drops down beside the Bucharest–Brașov main rail line and stays close to it. On the right, the poles that carry the trains' overhead power line pass a few meters from the guardrail, and beyond the tracks the backyards begin.
Two bridges, side by side
Over the Prahova River, the bypass passes beneath a new steel arch, rust-brown, with thin hangers holding up the deck. A few meters to the right stands an old riveted iron truss bridge, itself rusted. A small blue sign gives the name of the river below.
At the opening, Virgiliu Nanu, president of the Prahova County Council, listed the structures: two bridges, one 81 meters long and one 40, plus a 370-meter viaduct. CNAIR counts four structures — bridges, overpasses and viaducts — and two short-stay parking areas, one in each direction. There are four roundabouts: two along the route and one at each end, where the bypass meets DN1. Total length: 5.9 kilometers.
At the same ceremony, Nanu thanked the CNAIR team "even though they're still on the road and stuck in traffic," according to Digi24. The company's director general, Cristian Pistol, had not yet arrived.
Along the edge of town
Past another roundabout, the bypass runs by the skeleton of an old industrial building, its concrete floor slabs exposed, its windows without glass.
The bypass doesn't skirt Comarnic through open fields. It brushes the edge of town: yards stacked with lumber, houses with tin roofs, crosswalks painted red, with flashing signs powered by solar panels. At one of them, a man walks slowly across the red-backed zebra stripes.
The money comes from the Transport Program 2021–2027. The contract with the Frasinul–Artehnis joint venture was signed in May 2023 for 236.74 million lei, excluding VAT, and work began in November 2023. CNAIR puts the total cost of the investment at 470.06 million lei, including VAT.
The last kilometer
Toward the northern end, the hillside has been freshly cut. The earth is still bare, and the retaining walls are the color of new concrete. The road bends sharply between warning signs.
Cristian Andrei, head of CNAIR's maintenance department, delivered the verdict: the bypass "will not completely solve all of DN1's traffic-flow and access problems." Next come pedestrian underpasses in Comarnic, Bușteni and Predeal, and work at the entrance to and exit from the Sinaia bypass.
At the northern roundabout, a sign marks the town limit. Then the ramp descends, the orange posts return, and the road empties back into DN1, beneath the old stone wall, behind a line of cars headed for Sinaia.
Driven and filmed by the author from the car on Friday, Oct. 2, 2026, south to north. The October images are frames from that footage; the aerial shot is from June 28, 2026. Quotes from the opening ceremony were translated from Romanian.
