Bulgaria breaks ground on Ruse-Veliko Tarnovo motorway

The formal start of works was marked by a ground breaking ceremony on Lot 2 - a bypass of the town of Byala with a total length of 35.4 km, the government said in a statement on Sunday.

The AM Ruse Tarnovo consortium, comprising local companies Evropeiski Patishta, Groma Hold, Vodno Stroitelstvo-Blagoevgrad, Avtomagistrali Hemus and Patproect 2000, is building Lot 2 under a 660.4 million levs ($366.9 million/337.65 million euro) contract, according to a separate statement by the Road Infrastructure Agency. The Leader Consult tie-up was awarded a 10.8 million levs construction supervision contract.

The technical projects for the construction of the 75-km section of the planned motorway connecting the Danube city of Ruse to Byala are scheduled to be submitted by April 2024.

The construction works are funded out of the government budget, with 1.8 billion levs in additional EU grants available from the Transport Connectivity 2021-2027 operational programme.

The segment of Lot 2 on which ground was broken is 7.9 km long. The preparation of technical projects and securing land plots for the route are ongoing for the remaining part of the motorway, which is expected to be completed in five years and is crucial for the economic development of northern Bulgaria, the government said.

A public tender will be launched in early 2024 for Lot 3, which will connect Byala to Debelets, a town in the vicinity of the city of Veliko Tarnovo. In parallel, a separate public tender will be called for the technical design of the construction of an extension to the southern Maritsa motorway, which reaches the Turkish border.

Bulgaria selected two local tie-ups for the construction of the first two lots of the motorway in 2022.

(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)