NW 14:02:01 24-04-2015
SN1401NW.108
108 TRANSPORT - BULGARIA - ROMANIA - DANUBE BRIDGE 2
Millionth Car Crosses Danube Bridge 2
Vidin, on the Danube, April 24 (BTA) - Two years after Danube Bridge 2 was put into operation the motor vehicle traffic exceeds the forecast results, the CEO of the Bulgarian-Romanian Danube Bridge Vidin-Calafat company, Lyubomir Nizamov, told BTA. By 5:00 pm on April 23 one million trucks had crossed the bridge.
On the Bulgarian side there are concerted efforts to develop motor and railway transport across the bridge at Vidin, Nizamov said. The design of the freeway between Vidin and Montana (Northwestern Bulgaria) under OP Transport will be completed by the middle of the year and funding from the European Investment Bank will be sought for 2016. The freeway will ease traffic along the infrastructure leading to Danube Bridge 2. The implementation of the road projects will increase the traffic load and the facility will reach its optimum parameters.
An average of 1,700 - 1,800 vehicles a day cross the bridge and the forthcoming rehabilitation works at Rousse Bridge 1, which are expected to begin next month, could quite possible cause a considerable increase in the vehicles crossing Bridge 2. All kinds of cash-free payments have been provided to help carriers.
Crossing Danube Bridge takes 3 to 5 minutes and the whole procedure with border crossing takes about 10 minutes.
Railway traffic across the bridge has been insignificant over the past two years, with two international Sofia-Budapest trains crossing every day. The design of the Sofia-Vidin railway line to Medkovets station (Northwestern Bulgaria) should be ready by early April 2016. This is one of the priority projects in the Trans-European transport network (TEN-T) and is to be funded under Connecting Europe. This is also one of the indicative projects with which Bulgaria will apply, Nizamov said. The investment for the entire railway line to Sofia exceeds 2,500 million euro. /LY/BR
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