May 9 (SeeNews) - Serbia signed a 46 million euro ($50.5 million) deal with a consortium comprising Germany's Deutsche Bahn and France's Systra for the project management and supervision of the construction of the city's first metro line and depot, infrastructure minister Goran Vesic said.
"This year, we will start work on several metro stations, and in the meantime we will sign a contract [for the construction of a depot]. As soon as the review of the first line project is completed, we will sign the contract for the construction of that line," Vesic said, as quoted in a press release on Monday.
Serbia started the construction of the Belgrade metro in November 2021. Completion of the first metro line is expected in 2028, with a second line expected to be built in 2030.
In 2021, the Serbian government signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with PowerChina and French companies Alstom and Egis Rail for the construction of the Belgrade metro.
According to the preliminary design of the project, the Belgrade metro network will initially consist of two lines of 22 km and 19.8 km, respectively and will integrate four urban railway lines. The first line of the metro will run along the Sava river, crossing downtown Belgrade, and will link the Makisko Polje area in the southwestern part of the Serbian capital to the Mirijevo neighbourhood in the northeast, near the Danube river. The second line will connect Zemun, a northwestern suburb of Belgrade, to the Mirijevo neighbourhood through the New Belgrade urban municipality.
($ = 0.9110 euro)