February 20 (SeeNews) - Serbia plans to complete the second phase of construction of the Prokop railway station in central Belgrade on October 20, enabling the station to service more routes, president Aleksandar Vucic said.
“Works at Prokop are progressing well,” said Vucic in a video published on his Instagram profile last week.
The works cost 1.77 billion dinars ($16.1 million/15.1 million euro) and are being carried out by Belgrade-based company Railway City, local media reported. According to Serbia's business registry, Railway City is wholly owned by Cyprus-based Railway City Limited and was founded in April 2019.
Following the completion of the project, Prokop will have a total of ten tracks split across six platforms and serve as Belgrade's central railway station, replacing the old main station in downtown Belgrade. Prokop is currently serving a limited number of destinations, including Novi Sad, Nis and Uzice in Serbia and Bar in Montenegro.
Local authorities had to partly open Prokop for traffic because there was nowhere else for trains to terminate in Belgrade once the the old main station was closed in July 2018.
Serbian railways carried 5.5 million passengers last year, up from 2.8 million in 2021, Ivan Bulajic, acting director of Serbian railways, said in an interview with local broadcaster RTV in December.
Belgrade has a population of 1.7 million, according to the latest census held in 2022.
(1 euro = 117.331 dinars)