Final section of Belgrade bypass opened to traffic

BELGRADE - The final section of a 9.74 km Belgrade bypass stretching from Strazevica to Bubanj Potok was opened to traffic on Thursday.

The section completes a 47 km full-profile, six-lane motorway route from Batajnica to Bubanj Potok, whose construction began over 30 years ago.

The bypass will help reroute traffic from overloaded routes in the city, reducing transit journey times, the number of traffic accidents, vehicle exploitation costs, exhaust emissions and noise levels in the narrower urban area, Putevi Srbije said.

It will also reduce the number of vehicles crossing Belgrade's Gazela Bridge, one of the busiest traffic routes in Serbia.

Every day, the bridge is crossed by 200,000-250,000 people - or 130,000 vehicles, 7,000 light trucks and more than 3,000 public transport vehicles.

The construction of a 31 km Sector C from Bubanj Potok and Vinca to Pancevo, which will extend the traffic ring, has also been announced.

The contractor of the works on the Belgrade bypass was the Power Construction Corporation of China Ltd, with the Belgrade office of Azerbaijan's construction company AzVirt as the subcontractor

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