site.btaRuse-Giurgiu Danube Bridge Overhaul Begins July 10

Major repairs to the Giurgiu-Ruse bridge on the Bulgarian side at Ruse will begin on at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, July 10. The overhaul will be carried out without traffic stoppages and the facility will not be closed, the Road Infrastructure Agency (RIA) said. The repair will be launched in the buffer area of the Danube Bridge Border Checkpoint, Zone West.

Caretaker Cabinet Ministers Violeta Koritarova of Regional Development and Public Works, Deputy Dimitar Nedyalkov of Transport and Communications, and Yordan Valchev, Chairman of the RIA Management Board, Bulgaria's Ambassador to Romania Radko Vlaykov, Ruse Regional Governor Dragomir Draganov, Ruse Mayor Dragomir Draganov, and a representative of the Romanian Embassy in Bulgaria are among those expected to attend the event, Ruse Region PR person Georgi Georgiev told BTA.

Overhaul to take two years

Construction will be performed daily, for 10-12 hours per day, during daylight, without complete stoppage of traffic. Vehicles will be let through by stages in the carriageway where work is not carried out.

The building works will go through six stages. At stage one and two, the trestle of the bridge on Bulgarian territory will be overhauled. A 400 m stretch will be closed to traffic for this purpose. Traffic on the inbound carriageway to Bulgaria will be restricted first, followed by the outbound carriageway to Romania. Repair work in this section is estimated to take approximately four and a half months for each carriageway.

For better routing, traffic will be controlled by traffic lights. The lights can be moved to the portion of the bridge under repair. Because of the width and height of the facility, safe nighttime work is impossible, and the life and health of the road users and the builders is paramount. If some activities can be carried out safely without daylight, they will.

"All necessary measures have been taken to prevent traffic jams that could block the traffic on the Danube Bridge during its repair. It is very important to observe the signalization that will be put in place and accordingly drivers should not take hazardous driving manoeuvres in the section in an attempt to avoid waiting at the red traffic lights," Ruse Regional Governor Dragomir Draganov told BTA. 

The 1,057 km long Bulgarian section of the Bridge, which is part of the I-2 Road, has not been overhauled since its commissioning in 1954, i.e. for 70 years. The joints were reinforced more than 22 years ago, and the waterproofing and asphalt surfacing was replaced in 2011. According to the technical design for the overhaul of the facility, the asphalt layers, panels and waterproofing will be entirely replaced, new crash barriers will be installed, new road markings will be applied, etc. The overhaul project has been contracted to the Danube Bridge Civil-Law Company. The contract cost is BGN 44,877,228.68 inclusive of VAT. Under the contract, the construction works must be completed within 730 days. Construction supervision will be performed by anther civil-law company, Danube Bridge-PII-Strol, at the cost of BGN 848,400 after VAT.

Caretaker Regional Development and Public Works Minister Violeta Koritarova reported recently that a building permit for the overhaul had been issued. The bridge is in an emergency critical condition and poses a tangible risk to its users. The BGN 45 million repair will take two years, with measures to minimize inconvenience to traffic on the facility, Koritarova's Ministry said.

Resumption of the Ruse-Giurgiu ferry line will ease traffic in both directions

In early July, Bulgaria declared its full readiness for a resumption of the operation of the Ruse-Giurgiu ferry link. The project is key to easing traffic between Bulgaria and Romania and cut the crossing time, in view of the forthcoming repair of the Danube Bridge, Bulgarian Transport and Communications Minister Georgi Gvozdeykov said at a meeting with Koritarova and Romania's Ambassador in Sofia Brandusa Predescu.

Koritarova said that her Ministry had counted over 200,000 motor vehicles crossing the Ruse-Giurgiu bridge in May. Earlier this month, Koritarova commented that the ferry link can handle 20% of the heavy-duty truck traffic, enabling tourists to travel more comfortably.

10.8 million vehicles have crossed the Danube Bridge in the last eight years

The Customs Agency told BTA recently that the flow of vehicles passing through the facility is increasing every year. According to data, while the number of vehicles crossing the Danube Bridge in 2016 was 1,186,307, of which 549,803 were trucks, in 2023 the number was 1,729,668, of which 954,082 were trucks. 

A total of 10,808,846 have crossed the bridge in both directions between 2016 and 2023 Of these, 5,761,418 were trucks. 

In the first five months of 2024 alone, the number of vehicles was 685,799, of which 407,107 were trucks.

History of the Danube Bridge

The construction of the first bridge over the Danube in the Bulgarian-Romanian section of the river in our modern history began in 1952, but was preceded by almost a century of diplomatic and political efforts. The Danube Bridge at Ruse was opened on June 20, 1954. It was built with the joint efforts of the countries of the so-called Eastern bloc - Bulgaria, Romania, the USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, Vladislav Atanasov, curator at the Regional History Museum in Ruse, said in an interview with BTA on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the bridge's opening.