Belgrade Metro: Ground is being prepared for Chinese "moles"

Balerina Aya Jung gives prominent progressives and their partners tickets for Belgrade metro.

This scene took place in the 2018 election campaign of the Serbian Progressive Party. The year of validity of the tickets was 2022, and the then mayor Sinish Mali announced the start of construction in 2020.

The validity of this ticket has long since expired, and the preparatory stages for the metro have not been completed, let alone the construction itself.

Since in the last two decades no election campaign has passed without the citizens of Belgrade being promised a metro, the question is what should be expected now - the elections or that something is actually being done on the metro.

Tunnel for "mole" and Trg Republike

Seven years after Aja Jung's maps, RTS reports that the first phase of research for the subway in Belgrade in busy streets has been completed. It was about the initial geological surveys, and now the permits are being collected for the second phase, so the work should start in a few weeks.

Vladimir Madžarević, project manager from the company "Mostogradnja", said that the 11,4 kilometer long tunnel from Beli Vode to Karaburma will be built. That is why a factory for the construction of concrete linings will be built in Beli Vode, exactly at the place where the "mole", that is, a special digging machine, goes underground.

Although the work will be done in busy streets and thoroughfares, acting director of PUK "Belgrade Metro and Train" Andreja Mladenović says that efforts are being made not to disrupt the daily rhythm of the city. The works, he adds, will be carried out in streets such as Požeška, Bulevar Vojvode Mišić, on one side, and Dunavska, Trg Republike, Savska and Mostarska Petlje, on the other.

First line

According to some of the latest plans, the first line of the Belgrade metro was supposed to be finished by 2028, but the 2023 deadline was again moved to 2030. There should be 14 stations: Železnik, Makiš, Žarkovo, Bele vode, Trgovacka, Požeška, Park Banovo brdo, Ada Ciganlija, Sajam, Gazela, Savski trg, Trg republike, Skadarlija and Danube.

The works will mainly be carried out underground, but the construction of stations and supporting facilities (substations, shafts) will be above ground, with the formation of construction sites at those locations. For the first phase of the first line, the settlement of property-legal relations is carried out in the municipalities of Čukarica, Savski Venac, Stari Grad and Palilula. On the route of the first line, about 60 buildings are planned to be demolished, the media wrote.

Are they preparing for the elections?

The idea of a Belgrade metro is a century long, and was first mentioned in 1923, when the metro was first drawn up in the General Urban Plan of the capital city.

The company "Belgrade Metro and Train" was founded in 2018, and in the same year, the then Deputy Mayor of Belgrade, Goran Vesić, said that the metro is "the most important project of the next decade".

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The progressives started mentioning the metro as early as 2014, and it was announced that the works would start in 2016. That deadline was moved to 2018, then 2019 and 2020.

"In the second half of 2020, we will start building the metro, and in that way we will realize the decades-long dream of the citizens of Belgrade that Belgrade will not be the only city in Europe with more than a million inhabitants, without a metro... And we say the next, in 2020, and what President Vučić said, we may be a month or two late, but we will build that metro," Mali said in 2018.

Nevertheless, the metro was mentioned every time when the progressives were preparing for the elections, especially in Belgrade. The question is what are they preparing for now?

But the subway doesn't go through the city.

The biggest criticism of the preparations for the construction of the metro is that the first metro line will not go through the city to a greater extent and thus really relieve the traffic, which in Belgrade is at the limit of tolerability for both drivers and passengers.

The Faculty of Civil Engineering dissociated itself from the story of the subway before 2022, due to disagreement with the projected route of the first line, which, in their opinion, "should connect the old and new parts of the city."

For them, the proposed routes are not a good solution, because they will not relieve traffic in the most critical parts of the city. On the contrary, they believe that "the largest part of the city has been permanently left without a metro or even without a rational connection with the metro, and all this at the cost of huge investments."

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