September 15 (SeeNews) - Romania inaugurated the fifth line of Bucharest metro following a 3.2 billion lei (683 million/659 million euro) investment co-funded by the EU, metro operator Metrorex said on Tuesday.
The M5 Raul Doamnei - Eroilor metro line is 7 kilometres in length, has ten stations and connects the city centre to the southwestern part of Bucharest, Metrorex said in a press release.
The new line, including the Valea Ialomitei station and depot, was co-financed with 2.3 billion lei in non-reimbursable EU funds. The rest of the investment was financed from the state budget.
Works on the project began in November 2011 and were supposed to take three years to complete but were delayed mainly due to lack of funds and legal issues with tenders, according to data available on the transport ministry's website.
Bucharest underground railway network consists of five lines at the moment, with a total length of 78.5 km. The sixth line, which will link the city to the Henri Coanda international airport in Otopeni is currently in a planning phase. The European Commission approved a total allocation of 1.39 billion euro in 2019 for the 14 km line to the airport.
Bucharest, with population of 1.83 million, is the only city in Romania which has a metro. There are plans to build a metro line in the northwestern city of Cluj, which is the country's second largest, with population of 706,905.
In April, Cluj municipality said it has signed a 36 million lei deal with an Italian-French-Romanian consortium for pre-feasibility and feasibility studies for the construction of a subway line and a metropolitan train line.
(1 euro=4.8567 lei)