Final stretch of Bulgaria’s Trakiya Motorway opened on July 15
The final 34km stretch of Bulgaria’s Trakiya Motorway, which links capital city Sofia with the Black Sea city of Bourgas via Plovdiv, opened on July 15 2013.
The last stretch is between the village of Zimnitsa and the town of Karnobat.
Completion of the final section makes it possible for motorists to travel to the seaside at the legal speed limit of 140 km/h. Traffic police are to extend deployment of speed cameras, including mobile speed cameras, to check compliance with the speed limit.
However, given that sections of the motorway opened in recent years have no fuel stations, motorists are advised to fill up their tanks beforehand. Local media reports said that unwary motorists had been left stranded.
The July 15 opening ceremony was attended by President Rossen Plevneliev and the current minister of regional development. All prime ministers of the past years during which work had been done on the motorway were invited to attend, but for various reasons none would be there, reports said.
Maritsa motorway will be ready by the middle of 2014 at the latest, President Plevneliev said.
He said that 2012 was the year of Lyulin motorway, 2013 of Trakia motorway, 2014 would be the year of Maritsa motorway and 2015 of Struma motorway.
Plevneliev said that Maritsa motorway is strategically important to both Europe and Bulgaria.
The Maritsa motorway is part of the Pan-European corridor IV, which connects Central Europe with Asia. The project links the towns of Chirpan and Kapitan Andreevo, at the Turkish border. Maritsa motorway, designated A3, will branch off the Trakia motorway east of Plovdiv, just west of Chirpan and five km north of Parvomay, at the Orizovo interchange, and will run south east to the Turkish border.
The Lyulin motorway provides a link between the Sofia ringroad and the junction of Daskalovo near Pernik.
Struma Motorway follows the Pernik-Dupnitsa-Blagoevgrad-Sandanski-border route to Greece. It is part of the Pan-European Corridor IV and also is part of E79, that runs from Miskolc (Hungary) to Thessaloniki (Greece), via the Romanian cities of Deva and Craiova.
