The South Highway, the short route through the Balkans. The plans of the high -speed road that would connect Romania and Bulgaria
The South Highway, meant to improve the connection between western and southern Romania and continue in Bulgaria with an express road to the Highways in the Balkans, remained largely at the project stage.
Calafat – Vidin Bridge, part of the plan to connect Western Europe with the Balkans. Photo Daniel Guță
Only just over ten kilometers and a bridge over the Danube, in Calafat, were built so far from the South Highway (A6), a project meant to offer an alternative for international transport, the classic link between Romania and Bulgaria, on the Giurgiu – Russian bridge.
The route of the 80s
Part of the project has its origins in the 1980s, as a branch of an international transport route called TEM (Trans-European Motorway), which was to connect the western and northern Europe with the Balkan Peninsula and Turkey.
“The total length of the Romanian section of the Trans-European highway will be about 870 kilometers. The itinerary on which the bus will be built will cross 11 counties of the country and will have as an entrance point the town of Nădlac (border point in Arad county), from where it will descend to the south, following Lugătă, Constanta. In 1982, Mihai Boicu declared, at that time director of the Directorate of Roads of the Ministry of Transport and Telecommunications, in the magazine Almanah Auto.
After 1990, the priorities in the construction of highways in Romania bypassed the southwest region of the country. In the 2000s, another European project and this region was launched: the high -speed road Via Carpatia, designed to make the connection between the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea, starting from Klaipėda (Lithuania) and reaching to Thessaloniki (Greece). Part of the route visa and road infrastructure in Banat and Oltenia.
South Highway, in feasibility study
In recent years, the Romanian state has also promoted new plans for high -speed roads to link these capital regions.
The most recent project is aimed at the construction of the A6 Bucharest-Lugoj highway, also known as the South Highway, which would follow the Bucharest-Alexandria-Roșiori de Vede-Craiova-Calafat-Drobeta-Turnu Severin-Caransebeș-Lugoj. So far, only a 10.5 kilometer segment (Lugoj – Balinț) has been built in A6, inaugurated in 2013. The rest of the sectors, planned as express roads, are in the phase of feasibility study.
Two ramifications of the future highway, on the routes Craiova-Calafat and Drobeta-Turnu Severin-Calafat, would connect the highway network of Romania with that of Bulgaria through the Calafat-Vidin Bridge (video), inaugurated in 2013. The city of Calafat in Dolj county is about 90 kilometers from Craiova, on DN 56 (E 79) and Drobeta Turnu Severin (on DN 56A), the two roads to the Danube city being modernized in recent years.
The city of Vidin is almost 200 kilometers from the A2 Hemus highway, which connects Bulgaria to the Balkans, and the connection between them will be made through the future express road Vidin – Botevgrad (A2), whose segments are in various stages of design and execution. Less than 20 kilometers from the high -speed road in Bulgaria have been inaugurated so far, but in the coming years, it is expected to complete almost 100 kilometers.
