Design of study for Corridor "East" - multimodal road that would connect corridors 10 and 4

In addition to Corridor 10, which should connect far north and south of Serbia, our country could obtain another significant road that would be a part of the largest European corridor (south) that connects Portugal and the Black Sea. That is corridor East, which would make Serbia the crossroads of two important European corridors that connect the north with the south of Europe, as well as the west with the east.

- Designing of the feasibility study is underway and we are trying to organize everything in a way that one part of the study is financed from foreign donations. The study should be designed by the Institute for Roads (road transportation), while the railway part would be done by Institute CIP. The project receieved positive reactions from the Ministry of Infrastructure and Economy, as well as from other authorized ministries, the cabinet of the Prime Minister and President of the Republic - says Nenad Čolović, engineer and creator of the project.

This corridor is multimodal, which means that it includes road, railway and river transportation. Within the scope of the road part of corridor East, about 170 km of highway should be built and it would be an extension of the existing "Corridor 10", via Požarevac, Majdanpek, all the way to the Serbian-Bulgarian-Romanian border. Smaller part of the highway, from Negotin to Vidin, already exists and this section only needs to be modernized.

Construction of about 20 km of railway between Negotin and Vidin is also in the pipeline, as well as modernization of the railways. In that way, Serbian railways would be connected with Bulgarian and Romanian railways. River part of the corridor is the Danube river where several piers should be built.

Corridor "East" would connect "Corridor 10" (Austria - Slovenia - Croatia - Serbia - Greece - Bulgaria) with "Corridor 4" (Germany - Czech Republic - Hungary - Romania - Bulgaria - Turkey). The advantage of Corridor East lies in the fact that it would create direct link with the port of Constanza, but it would avoid the difficult Carpathians (Romania), Balkan's mountain massif (Bulgaria), as well as swamps on the left bank of the Danube in Romania, near Turn Severin.

According to earlier claims of the Minister of Infrastructure, Velimir Ilić, ever since Romania and Bulgaria became members of European Union, at the beginning of 2007, transportation accross our country has been reduced by 20%. In addition to long waiting on the borders, the reason for that also lies in the development of Corridor 4, which connects Bulgaria and Romania with the rest of Europe.