The old bridge on the River Sava in Belgrade, known as Savski Most, will be relocated with the new bridge to be built in its place in late September 2018 – said Belgrade Mayor, Sinisa Mali.
The bridge was designed by the CIP Traffic Institute. The Mayor says that the new bridge will be a new symbol of Belgrade and that the estimated construction costs are in the region of 30mln EUR. The new bridge will be built for three reasons – to alleviate traffic, increase safety and aesthetics.
“Bearing in mind its current capacity, the old Savski Most is no longer able to cater to such a heavy traffic. With the new bridge the traffic capacity will go up several times. The second reason why we want to build this bridge is safety considering that the old bridge was built during the Word War II, and it rests on wooden pillars which makes it unsafe. During his 70 years of existence, it has been reconstructing several times”, Mali explains.
The new bridge will be between 32 and 35 metres wide (the current one is 16 metres wide) and it will cater to pedestrians, cyclists and other vehicles.
“The new bridge meets all the technical requirements and will resemble its modern counterparts in the rest of Europe”, civil engineer, Aleksandar Bojovic says.
Nobody knows as yet what will happen to the old Savski Most. The Belgrade Mayor says that the citizens of Belgrade will have the final say, but he, personally, would like to see it relocated to the stretch between the Hotel Yugoslavia and the Big War Island.
To remind, the old Savski Most was built by the Germans during the World War II after the earlier bridge, called the Bridge of the King Alexander the First, was destroyed in the bombing of Belgrade in 1941. During the war, Savski Most was called the Prince Eugen Bridge, and after the war, it was called the German Bridge. The bridge was designed by a German company from Dortmund.
(eKapija, 15.06.2017)
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