How long is the walk to A&E?

Your street's emergency unit#

Type a street. You get the minutes on foot to the nearest emergency unit, the distance in metres and the unit itself — with its type (adult or paediatric) — with a button that takes you to it on the map. The number is the minimum across the street's addresses: the closest point sets it. Metres and minutes run straight to the hospital point — not a route, not the A&E entrance. In a real emergency call 112.

Street

Try: Moșilor Victoriei Milcov

Example street

How Bucharest streets compare

The city median is 33.0 minutes — half of the 112,894 analysed points are closer to emergency care, half farther. No street is at zero (0.0%): 0 minutes would mean an address right on the unit point.

The farthest from emergency care, of the streets with at least 20 addresses, is Strada Italia, with 33 addresses in the index: 128.6 minutes (10,289 metres) to Universitar. It is the only street with at least 20 addresses at 0.1 minutes. We show the closest: Splaiul Independenței, with 204 addresses in the index: 0.1 minutes, by Universitar.

The numbers measure the straight line to the nearest of the 8 units on the map; a street's unit is its point's unit. The map covers 6 adult and 2 paediatric units. A minute means 80 metres of easy walking. In a real emergency, call 112: the ambulance decides the destination, not the map.

What the minutes mean#

Every street and every map cell is coloured by the minutes on foot to the nearest emergency unit; the bands are the same everywhere. A minute means 80 metres of easy walking, straight line — no detours, no crossings. The decimal minute and the exact metres are orientation, not route guidance: the distance runs straight to the hospital point, not to the A&E entrance.

Band	Minutes	What it looks like
At zero	0 minutes	No street sits here: 0.0 after rounding would mean under 4 metres from a unit — and no displayed value rounds to 0.0 today.
Close	0–5 minutes	Splaiul Independenței (0.1 minutes) sits here — the closest street; next comes Bulevardul Mărăști (0.5).
Nearby	5–10 minutes	7.8% of analysed points are within 10 minutes of a unit; the city median is 33.0 minutes.
Far	10–15 minutes	Bulevardul Iuliu Maniu (13.1 minutes) sits here.
Very far	15–30 minutes	Calea Giulești (19.6 minutes) sits here — and Șoseaua Mihai Bravu (25.0 minutes).
Desert	over 30 minutes	Strada Italia sits here, at 128.6 minutes — the farthest of the streets with at least 20 addresses.

The minute is our own reckoning: 80 metres, an easy city pace, the same for every street.

The bands are this analysis's cuts, fitted to the spread of minutes: “at zero” means 0.0 after rounding (under 4 metres from a unit) — an empty band (0 streets); “desert” above 30 minutes. The upper bound belongs to the band: 5.0 minutes falls in “Close”. Every ranking shows the number to one decimal.

How it is measured#

Each street takes its unit from around its addresses: for every point in the index, the straight-line distance to the nearest emergency unit; the street's number is the minimum — the closest point sets it. The index keeps at most 60 points per street — 602 streets hit the cap — and the card shows indexed addresses, not evaluated points.

The units are the 8 Bucharest hospitals with verified general emergency intake: 6 adult — Floreasca, Universitar, Sf. Pantelimon, Bagdasar-Arseni, Sf. Ioan, Elias — and 2 paediatric — Grigore Alexandrescu and Marie Curie. Each is an amenity=hospital node with emergency=yes on OpenStreetMap, its name and address checked against the DSPB official list of September 2025; seven of them also appear on the DSPB holiday rotas (Whitsun 2024, Easter and 1 May 2026). Elias runs a working emergency unit — its official page says it takes patients “spontaneously or by ambulance” — but it is on none of the three DSPB holiday rotas: on holidays, call ahead. Outside the map stay the specialty-intake units (5: burns, eye, cardiac, infectious, orthopaedic), the restricted-access ones (3: military, interior ministry, intelligence service) and 7 hospitals with no verified general intake — their cover is specialty or on unverified hours.

A street with under 3 addresses in the index gets no number; 506 streets stayed unmeasured — they show as such, not as zero. City shares are computed over 112,894 analysed points. Sector medians use the points inside each sector's ring; 3,958 points fall in no ring but count toward the city.

Limits: the line is straight — detours, fences and boulevards with no crossing are invisible, so the distance is a lower bound on the real route, and the minutes an estimate at an assumed pace: real time depends on route and pace. The point is the mapped hospital node, not a verified A&E entrance: entrances are not searchable points on the map. And maps age: a unit opened after the extract is missing until the next one. Names, addresses and points were verified on 1 October 2026 and are re-checked yearly; the figures stay current until October 2027. Most important: in a real emergency call 112 — the ambulance decides where you go, not the map.

Distances run in a local projection — checked on 200 points against haversine: maximum error 0.557%.

Sources#

Data

• OpenStreetMap: addresses and building outlines, reused from the 'How green is your street' map (ODbL)
• OpenStreetMap via Nominatim: the 8 emergency hospitals' points, each tagged emergency=yes (ODbL)
• Bucharest public health directorate (DSPB): public inpatient units — the official list, September 2025
• DSPB Bucharest: the 9 hospitals on Whitsun 2024 duty — who takes emergencies (Basilica mirror)
• DSPB Bucharest: the hospitals on Easter 10–13 April 2026 duty — who takes emergencies
• DSPB Bucharest: the hospitals on 1 May 2026 duty — who takes emergencies
• Elias hospital: its emergency unit takes patients 'spontaneously or by ambulance' (official page, in Romanian)
• Archived geocode extract (JSON, 1 October 2026)
• Archived sector rings (JSON)

Sibling maps

• Who decides the emergency: what happens when you call 112 — call first, the map is orientation
• Near the hospital: national mortality by distance to a hospital — a different question, nationwide
• How long do you walk to the metro: the same 3D map, the minutes on foot to the station

In a real emergency call 112 first: who decides the emergency shows what happens to your call — and near the hospital measures the same distance nationwide.