State and municipal institutions in Ruse discussed measures to reduce traffic and queues of trucks at the Danube Bridge border checkpoint

Monday, 16 September 2024

Proposal of measures to regulate the normal waiting and passage of heavy goods vehicles through the Danube Bridge - Ruse/Giurgiu border checkpoint, without allowing the formation of queues of illegally parked heavy goods vehicles on the national and municipal road network, was the main topic of the meeting held today in the Conference Hall of the Municipality of Ruse. It was initiated by the Regional Governor Dragomir Draganov and was attended by the Mayor of Ruse Municipality Pencho Milkov, Deputy Mayor Dimitar Nedev, representatives of state and local institutions, as well as the parking lots in the city.

During the meeting, various proposals were discussed for better regulation of the administration of the virtual queue, which currently exists. It was also reported that the presence of the buffer parking lot, built last year, has reduced traffic accidents in the area at times.

In the course of the talks, Mayor Pencho Milkov said that if the state does not intervene adequately, it is quite possible that the blockades from previous years of the Danube Bridge will be shifted to the entry-exit points of the city. "I want to remind the state that its main duty is to ensure public order and tranquility, because the problem with heavy traffic on the main road arteries is not only the municipality. For decades, the local government has been engaged in dealing with state and international problems and activating resources for activities that are not inherent to them, but had to be carried out," Milkov stressed.

The mayor of Ruse Municipality also said that the problem with increased traffic and traffic jams is mainly rooted in the actions of institutions in our northern neighbor, which have been creating unevenness in the passage of the checkpoint for years. "I have appealed to many governments to build a buffer parking lot by the state and I have received numerous refusals. One government gave us 3 million. with which we built a sample of a parking lot, which is a boutique with its 70 parking spaces."

The mayor recalled that the state has created a system - the Bulgarian Excise Centralized Information System (BECIS), which can serve as a starting point for the creation of such a system related to the regulation of heavy goods traffic in the country.

Milkov proposed to improve the throughput capacity of the Danube Bridge border checkpoint with urgent legislative measures and changes in the regulatory and regulatory framework. He said that the full access of state authorities to the software of the private company that manages the virtual queue should be regulated by law. "In the contract with the company, we have put a clause that if the state develops such software, they must work on it. So far, there is none, but it - the state, can work out its own requirements on how to model it and ask for access to it," the mayor said.

Trucks to wait in the interior of the country was Pencho Milkov's next proposal and this should be a permanent measure, not a crisis, as at the moment. "Why do the citizens of Ruse have to breathe the exhaust fumes of thousands of trucks, why should the road infrastructure be broken without the municipality receiving a penny of return? All taxes go to Sofia and nothing remains for Ruse, as well as for all border towns. The Road Infrastructure Agency must urgently develop a new system for these agreements with municipalities and border towns with a much higher amount per kilometer of route, because an international corridor passes here," Milkov said. He pointed out that separate zones should be built in the interior of the country, in which trucks, which received numbers from the border at Svilengrad with a route map to Ruse, should wait in them, and not accumulate by thousands in the approaches to the Danube Bridge. "The other directorates of the Ministry of Interior along this transport line should also be held responsible, and not the Regional Directorate of the Ministry of Interior-Ruse to suffocate with traffic regulation and look for options on how to qualitatively carry out other important activities related to the security of the citizens of Ruse."

The mayor also proposed another measure to regulate heavy traffic, namely - the placement of barriers in all parking lots, which should be connected in a single centralized system. "There must be a "filter" to limit the mass entry of trucks into the approaches to the border crossing point and to clog the two roundabouts, which are the direct connection of the residents of small settlements with the city," Milkov said.  

At the end of the meeting, the Regional Governor said that the Ruse-Giurgiu ferry connection will be operational in October at the latest, which, in his words, will relieve nearly 1/3 of the heavy traffic in the area.

 

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