site.btaHeavy Truck Traffic at Ruse-Giurgiu Bridge, Drivers Wait 12 Hrs-Plus to Cross Border

There is heavy traffic of trucks at the Danube Bridge border checkpoint near Ruse on Thursday, with border officials registering that a total of 2,833 trucks passed through the facility in both directions over the past 24 hours. Of these, 1,349 entered Bulgaria, while 1,484 left the country.

The queue for outbound trucks is approximately one kilometre long, and there are even more outbound trucks waiting at a parking lot near the checkpoint, as drivers must wait more than 12 hours to cross the bridge in order to enter Romania

Aleksandar Simeonov, a Bulgarian truck driver, told BTA that he has parked his truck at 8 p.m. on Wednesday and at 11 a.m. on Thursday he was still waiting to cross the Danube Bridge on his way to Finland.

Earlier on Thursday, caretaker Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev convened an urgent meeting at the Council of Ministers in connection with the problem with parking lots at Bulgaria's border crossings.

On July 10, Bulgaria started a major overhaul of the Bulgarian section of the 70-year-old Danube Bridge, which is why the traffic is carried out in only one lane and Border Police officers regulate the traffic in the reconstruction area.