Bulgaria: Construction of longest railway double tunnel in Balkans begins

Construction of the longest railway double tunnel built so far in Bulgaria and the Balkans began on July 15, caretaker Transport Minister Georgi Todorov said.

Construction of the seven km tunnel is part of a project to modernise the railway line between Elin Pelin and Vakarel, on the Sofia-Plovdiv line.

That route is 20km long and is part of the project to modernise the Elin Pelin – Kostenets railway line.

A total of 498 million leva will be invested in the reconstruction of the 20km route through two EU programmes, the Transport Ministry said.

The National Railway Infrastructure Company signed the contract with the consortium that will carry out the project in November 2019.

The design speeds for passenger transport are 160 km/h and 120km/h for goods trains.

Todorov said that there were extremely large technical and operational challenges, as this lot was the most difficult of the whole section.

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