Sofia subway operator breaks ground on 6-km extension

The construction of the new section is financed by 106.6 million levs from the EU's cohesion fund, with the remaining 433.4 million levs coming from the municipal budget and the European Investment Bank (EIB), the Sofia municipality said in a press release on Monday.

The extension project for Line 3 is scheduled to be completed in the spring of 2027, with three construction sites active and permits expected for the other three by the end of November. The total length of Sofia's subway system will reach 61 km of tracks with 56 stations upon completion of the two Line 3 extensions that are currently underway. Passenger numbers are projected to rise by 16 million to 200 million per year.

Upon the completion of the new current lot, some 75,000 more people will be able to use the underground daily, newly-elected Sofia mayor Vassil Terziev was quoted as saying in the statement. The new section will link the Tsarigradsko Shosse boulevard and nearby Sofia Tech Park to the Slatina district in the eastern part of Sofia.

Metropoliten has signed a contract with Siemens Mobility Austria to procure eight new trains for a total of 68 million euro ($74.4 million), to be delivered by mid-2026 and deployed on Line 3, according to information on the public tender register website.

In December last year, Metro Shipka consortium, led by Bulgarian civil engineering company Trace Group Hold [BUL:T57], signed a contract for the construction of a lot with two stations of the Line 3 extension. Another consortium led by Trace Group, Metro Slatina, was earlier awarded another contract to build another section of the line with two more stations as part of the same project.

In June, the Metro Build East consortium won a 111.9 million levs tender for the construction of a section with the final two stations. The consortium comprises local companies GP Group and Smart Build Digital.

Metropoliten launched the Line 3 extension project in 2021. Two parts of the line, with 12 stations, have already been completed and are in operation, using Siemens-made traffic control and safety systems.

(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)