Bulgaria starts motorway repairs ahead of summer tourist season
As the summer tourist season approaches, so does the best time to carry out road repairs, but Bulgaria’s Regional Development Minister Nikolai Nankov vowed on May 1 to keep maintenance work on some of the country’s busiest motorway stretches as short as possible in order to avoid traffic snarls and minimise disruption.
Nankov attended a ceremony marking the start of repairs on an 8km stretch of Trakiya Motorway just outside Bourgas, which sees heavy traffic each summer but had not been repaired in more than a decade.
Nankov said that the repairs would be completed “within 35-40 days, meaning by around June 5-6, before the start of the active season, we will be done with the eight kilometres at the entrance to Bourgas,” as quoted by Bulgarian National Television.
Work on the road linking Bourgas to the resort of Slunchev Bryag (Sunny Beach) near Aheloi and Pomorie was due to be completed by mid-June, Nankov said.
On May 8, Bulgaria’s road infrastructure agency will also start maintenance works on the Trakiya Motorway stretch between Plovdiv and Stara Zagora, a stretch of the road that had not undergone major repairs since it was opened in 1995.
For the duration of the works, freight lorries would be re-routed to secondary roads, but cars and buses will still be able to use the motorway, although traffic will be restricted to only one lane in each direction.
The road infrastructure agency’s head Doncho Atanassov gave no firm deadline for the duration of repairs, but said that all efforts would be made for the works to be completed by the end of June, as quoted by Bulgarian National Radio.
