Apart from an interoperable and integrated infrastructure and efficient railway transport services, the European Union focuses on cross-border connections which need improvement and a continuous transport flow. Thus, a profitable railway network depends on cross-border traffic, which, in turn requires financing for projects aimed at optimizing the infrastructure. Bulgaria boasts about managing to elaborate projects for 80% of the funds that EU has granted to the new member state.
“ In Central and East-European countries, cross-border transport requires a better cooperation between companies and, most important, between infrastructure managers. Aside from the infrastructure modernization and increasing capacity, one of the weakest points is the cross-border infrastructure”, declared Eric Peetermans, Chairman of the UIC Combined Transport Group.
Therefore, increasing the infrastructure capacity and transport volumes depends on improving the efficiency of cross-border transport, materializing in projects that require massive investments and initiated for network integration.
Under the circumstances, as many other countries in the ECE, Bulgaria has to invest in these projects, the key objective in the transport policy being to ensure a balanced and sustainable transport carried out by developing and upgrading the main key points of the railway infrastructure, especially cross-border infrastructure, as services in these points represent the backbone of the intermodal transport in Bulgaria. Most intermodal units (79.4%) are represented by transit services. Bilateral international services amounted to 18.2% (2007) of the total intermodal traffic reaching to a higher level than many other ECE countries. Transport services through Bulgaria have shipped goods between Europe and Turkey, thus becoming intercontinental services. Cross-border traffic in Bulgaria, including Bulgaria amounted to 93,200 TEUs and 0.9 million tonnes (in 2007), 18.7% was represented by the international volume (allocated to bilateral services) and 81.3% were transit services. For many years, the bilateral international traffic was based exclusively on the freight trains between Sofia and Thessaloniki (Greece), Bulgaria-Romania, Bulgaria-Austria, Bulgaria-Germany.
The importance of cross-border traffic in securing the fluidity of transport flows, as well as the significance of a performing infrastructure have made the Bulgarian authorities demand EU funding for specific projects. “Bulgaria seeks to accelerate the absorption of funds and has managed to submit projects for 80% of the funds. In the coming period of time, we will launch tenders. Projects considered for the financial period 2014-2020 are in collaboration with Romania (Sofia-Vidin), Serbia, Macedonia, Turkey. The identified projects are focused on the border connections of the Corridors”, declared Ivaylo Moskovski, the Bulgarian Minister of Transport.
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