With the temporary suspension of traffic on the international railway line Belgrade – Bar, Belgrade no longer has a single railway link with other Balkan countries, which goes hand-in-hand with the devastation of the local railway network in Serbia, says the Ne Davimo Belgrade/Green-Left Front movement.
While the Serbian President boasts of investing the state investing in the construction of railways and renovation of the 75-kilometre-railroad connecting Belgrade and Novi Sad, the general situation with the railway grid is getting worse, as the trains that used to go from Belgrade to Vienna, Prague, Ljubljana, Sarajevo, Zagreb, Budapest, Timisoara, Istanbul, Sofia, Thessaloniki, Skopje and other European cities, have all been cancelled.
Today, thanks to bad management and the incompetence of the ruling party, Belgrade has no railway connection with the region. The only currently active international railroad which connects the Serbian town of Dimitrovgrad to Sofia in Bulgaria runs once a day.
Zoran Bukvić, from the Ne Davimo Beograd movement, also points out that in Western Europe, high-speed trains are a more efficient form of transport than aeroplanes and assessed that the combination of high-speed trains and having enough parking lots around the city, as well as intermodal integration of trains with city public transport and public bicycle systems, should be a dominant form of long-distance transport.
Bukvić also pointed out to the comfort and advantages of travelling by train and added that trains are the most environmentally sustainable means of transport, which, with proper investments, can also become the fastest.
(Danas, 28.03.2023)
https://www.danas.rs/vesti/ekonomija/beograd-ostao-bez-zeleznicke-veze-sa-balkanom/
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