y 1,500 miles of the rivers are considered navigable. All of the
Danube--over 900 miles--that is within or along the southern border of
the country is navigable and, in fact, connects the Black Sea and
Romania with all points upstream--through Yugoslavia, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, and Austria to Ulm in West Germany. The Prut, flowing
along much of the eastern border with the Soviet Union, accounts for
most of the remaining navigable mileage. Other streams are useful in
some degree for timber rafting and for floating agricultural products
downstream. Rapid currents in hilly sections, silting and meandering
streambeds in the lowlands, and fog and ice in winter months, however,
limit the commercial usefulness of the rivers. Ice stops traffic on the
Danube River for an average of more than one month per year and on the
other streams from two to three months.

The country's topography does not lend itself to the development of an
extensive system of canals. There are short canals in the western
lowlands. Two of them connect to the Tisza River in Yugoslavia but, as
with this pair, further development of the waterways in this portion of
the country would be economically advantageous only when they connected
to points in Hungary or Yugoslavia. Most of the northern and central
regions are hilly or mountainous.

Cargo shipped on rivers and canals in 1969 was less than 1 percent of
that carried by the other transport systems, but most of it was
transported for relatively long distances along the Danube River.
Passengers carried constituted an even more minute percentage of the
total and, because the largest numbers of them rode river ferries, the
relative passenger mileage percentage was even lower.

Airlines

Commercial aviation is altogether state owned and is operated by an
office in the Department of Automotive, Maritime, and Air Transportation
that, with the Department of Railroads, is part of the Ministry of
Transportation. Romanian Air Transport--always referred to in common and
in most official usage as TAROM, derived from Transporturi Aeriene
Romane--serves a dozen or more cities in the country and contacts about
twenty national capitals outside the country. These include Moscow, all
of the capitals of the Warsaw Treaty Organization (Warsaw Pact) member
nations, and about a dozen capitals in Western Europe and the Middle
East. Service to nearly all of the external points consists of no more
than one round trip flight