Sofia, a European city with a population of 1.6 million citizens and over 800,000 cars (in 2012) is confronted with traffic congestion problems which challenge the authorities who have to meet mobility needs, especially considering the increasing level of urbanization.
The extension of Sofia’s territory, the construction of new boulevards that are connected to the central ring are limited projects and don’t have a proper answer to the increasing number of citizens and traffic and, because of the limited infrastructure capacity and the intense traffic growth, major traffic bottlenecks are created which reduce the speed of public transport vehicles to 10 km/h. These are few of the transport problems of the Bulgarian capital, which are also the problems of other big cities. The solution identified by authorities is the extension of the underground network to answer mobility needs.
In the next two years, the metro network is intended to cover 70% of Sofia’s surface, according to the mayor of the capital, YordankaFandakova, who said that there are construction plans for the line that would connect the Airport to the Business Park District and the lines would be extended by two sections from TsarigradskoShose to the Airport and Mladost 1-Sofia Business Park, a section with 3 metro stations due in 2015.
According to the General Scheme, the development of the network should include three diameters with a total length of 57 km and 54 stations and the finalization of these lines will increase the number of passengers to 550 million/year (over 45% of the public transport share). The first line (Lyulin – Centre – Mladost) would have 29 km (22 stations), line 2 (Nadezhda–Central Station – Lozenets) with 12 km (13 stations) and the third line (OvchaKupel – Centre– V.Levski) 17 km (19 stations). The lines intersect in the centre of the city which permits an exchange of line for each direction. On the long term, the authorities plan extensions of these lines to the suburbs so that they could have a well-defined structure in the final phase.
The projects to be launched by the autho-rities consist in the development of a 5-km section (line Tsarigradsko – Druzhba – Airport) and of a 2.7km section (Line Mladost I – Business Park), the construction period of both extension being 2013-2015. According to the declarations of Sofia Mayor, other projects for the development of the metro system will be developed from 2015, among them the 17km ring line connecting Botevgradsko Boulevard, OvchaKupel District and the ring road.
As regards the extension of the line to Business ParkMetropoliten, in February the company that operates Sofia metro network selected two consortia Metro Build Mladostand Geometro B.P to execute construction works for the 2.63km section due in 24 months.
In May, the municipality will also initiate a tender for the extension to the south of the metro network consisting in a 1.2km section. The project has to be completed by 2015 and its implementation will be supported with European funds.
If the authorities will manage to implement all the projects included in the Ge-neral Development Scheme, the metro network will have a total length of 78 km (74 stations) and will operate 6 routes which will increase the underground transport share to over 60%.
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