site.btaSolutions Sought to Resolve Truck Traffic Problem at Danube Bridge and Vicinity

The deputy ministers of interior, transport and regional development and public works, Ventsislav Katinov, Nikolay Naydenov and Nikolay Shushkov respectively, arrived in the Danubian city of Ruse Friday to discuss solutions of the problem of traffic at a working meeting called by Mayor Pencho Milkov. Intensive truck traffic around Danube Bridge border checkpoint and the vicinity has hindered normal movement and locals have been protesting.

The experts mapped out short term, medium-term and long-term measures designed to deal with the matter, Ruse Regional Governor Anatoly Stanev told a news briefing later. 

To begin with, the perimeter at which truck will stop in the interior of the country will be expanded. As of Friday, December 16, trucks around Veliko Tarnovo and Stara Zagora will wait in the vicinity of Haskovo, Lovech, Pleven and Shumen, Katinov said. To this end, traffic police will be supplied information from the existing coordination centre. 

Quite a lot of efforts have been made since the beginning of August, but Ruse cannot expect the city’s urban development plan to be changed overnight, Naydenov said. Referring to the national strategy on construction of buffer parking lots in the country, he added he had seen it twice at interdepartmental meetings for the first time this year and its implementation was yet to be seen. 

Prioritized design of the international “Bulgaria” boulevard in Ruse is pending, right after the prompt partial repair of critical sections. The checkpoint has one of the heaviest workloads in Bulgaria, but the problem is the heavy traffic which passes through the city, Shishkov said. 

A public procurement for the repair of Danube Bridge on the Bulgarian side will be announced next month, with repair works planned to begin in the summer, he added. Besides the fact that diplomatic efforts should continue, for there a certain periods of the day when Romania does not accept trucks from Bulgaria, causing bottlenecks, the big solution will be the quick accession of both countries to Schengen, Shushkov said.

Two buffer parking lots for trucks by Ruse will be provided. One will be built with BGN 3.0 million extended by the state, with the procedure already under way, Milkov said. The other one will be a private investment for which a participant has already been selected.