Bubanj Potok Interchange Jams Highway (VIDEO)

It used to be that, on Sundays and on the last day of a holiday, in the evening, the citizens of Belgrade returning from home would be apprehensive about the toll station near Bubanj Potok. When this ominous facility was replaced by a much more comfortable one near Vrcin, the drivers could breathe a sigh of relief for a while – until they were blocked by the recently opened Bubanj Potok interchange: weekend after weekend, there are kilometers-long traffic jams in front of it.

The same happened last night. Around 8 PM, it took around 15 minutes to drive from the Vrcin toll station to the exit to Belgrade, in a row, bit by bit, in second, maybe third, gear. There were no crashes. The weather was nice.

The reason for this is quite clear: the road fork toward a small, minor city in Serbia like Belgrade was designed and built as modestly as possible, on the least amount of space possible and using as little asphalt as possible.

The interchange seems to be designed according to some old standards from the socialist Yugoslavia, from before December 31, 1984, and the cancelation of petrol tickets, when the Brotherhood and Unity Highway was being built for Turkish truck drivers and Yugoslav workers from the Hamburg area, and local students and the proletariat returned by bus with bags, transported by the late Jugekspres from Leskovac.

In the meantime, however, the traffic volume on Serbia roads increased considerably, people mostly travel in cars, so they need a little more space and to have Serbian interchanges at least resemble German ones, for example. And as far as we know, the Bubanj Potok interchange was initially supposed to have only one little lane toward the little Belgrade, in which case the last night’s jam would have spread toward the south like the tiny little river Great Morava. Even this way, unfortunately, it could stretch all over to Velika Plana by the Armistice Day (November 11), or at least Easter.

The claustrophobic design of the interchange has caused a great need for interweaving at a short distance, creating an especially difficult situation when the great majority of vehicles is heading for Belgrade, not the interchange, as is the case on Sundays and holiday evenings, and with time, the morning rush hour is going to get worse too. They all have to go to the right lane, then take the right turn to their Belgrade town. And in this lane, under ideal conditions, there is room for only 2,000 cars an hour. And nothing here is ideal, plus a half of Serbia is in Belgrade.

So, now we have a bottleneck on the most important road fork in the country. To say that access to the capital city is made more difficult with the opening of this ring road sounds as stupid as it is true. Was it all for naught, all those subsequent numbers and letters on the lanes, while we still believed that this failure could be fixed with make-up? Seems like it, unfortunately, if we don’t expand the lane by a lot, all the way to behind IKEA, and we should start as soon as possible! Unfortunately, it is now too late for a full redesign, whereby, like in Germany or the whole developed Europe, the main route would go toward the capital city, whereas the forking would go toward the ring road (Dobanovac interchange likes this).

Let us just mention that the entire highway A1, at least to Batocina, has been ripe for expansion by at least one lane on each direction for a long time now, as has been the highway to Novi Sad. A lot of work lies ahead of us – unfortunately, also on a structure that has just opened.

M. Radonjic

Vrčin

Bubanj potok interchange

ring road around Belgrade

traffic jams

bottleneck

traffic jams at access to Belgrade