Two tunnels under Shipka, the first one will start soon

On the very day of the meeting, the company selected to design and build the facility – Hydrostroy AD, was

confirmed

verbally that is

agree yes

conclude a contract

at the price at which it won the tender – BGN 358 million, without any claims due to the large increase in the price of construction materials from the time when it prepared the offer.

“I was afraid that they would give up, but today we received an oral confirmation, and on Friday we will receive it in writing, which means that work can begin,” Karadzhov said.

The tender was for the completion of the Gabrovo bypass road, preparation of a technical project and construction of the tunnel. The implementation period is 4 years and 2 months. Of these, 8 months are for design and 3 and a half years for construction.

The contract could have been signed in July last year, when the results of the public procurement became clear. However, then the caretaker Minister of Regional Development Violeta Komitova fired the chairman of the board of the road agency Apostol Minchev, who had proposed a contract, although the removal was for other publicly announced reasons. Subsequently, the company ranked second appealed first to the CPC, and when the commission rejected the appeal – to the SAC, which

confirm

the solution

of the CPC

At the beginning of the year, however, the Deputy Prime Minister said that the tunnel was narrow – with only one pipe for the movement of vehicles and one lane in each direction, in addition, there is no technical project, and funding is not provided. This caused dissatisfaction among Gabrovo residents, who commented on social media that apparently the new government will put an end to their decades-long efforts to build a tunnel under Shipka (See the infographic.) The meeting on Thursday was organized on the occasion of these protests.

“The tunnel under Shipka cannot but be completed. My wish was the highway Ruse – Veliko Tarnovo

to continue on

south and pass

across the mountain

with the same

dimensions

That is why I expressed surprise that the tunnel that will connect North and South Bulgaria is designed with only two lanes “, said Minister Karadjov. According to him, however, after the completion of the highway from Ruse to Veliko Tarnovo (around 2030 – b.a.) traffic to Gabrovo will increase many times. For this reason, the Minister has already commissioned a study on the possibility of building another route to take the heavy traffic south of Veliko Tarnovo, including another tunnel under the Balkan Mountains.

He

will be different

from this floor

Shipka Peak

An intermediate option was to dig another pipe at the site of the tunnel, which would not require additional EIA, but this option was abandoned because it does not fit into the budget of the project that is starting.

Funding for the current tunnel under Shipka is not in danger, Minister Grozdan Karadjov told Gabrovo residents. The project together with the one for the construction of “Struma” through the Kresna Gorge and the highway Ruse – Veliko Tarnovo is proposed for funding from the program “Transport Connectivity 2021-2027”, which is expected to be approved by mid-2022. Funding provided by our country will receive for the three sites,

is around

600 million euros

This amount will be able to provide about 34% of the required funds for each of the three projects. The rest will be from the state budget. “The budget of the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works for 2022 envisages an amount for new construction, which can be used as an advance payment for the start of construction of the tunnel under Shipka, but provided that the proposed budget is approved by the National Assembly,” said the Deputy Prime Minister.

The inclusion of the Struma highway in the amount of 600 million euros in practice means working only on the so-called eastern option, as the construction of a 15-kilometer tunnel, which environmentalists are pushing for, costs much more.

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