As Morski/Andrej Jelusic writes, the height of the summer season is just around the corner, and the largest road investment in all of Croatia, Peljesac Bridge, is still being constructed to a certain degree, despite numerous encouraging announcements. We’ll be waiting until mid-July for the Peljesac bridge construction to be entirely completed and for the structure to be open to traffic, but that won’t really be the end.
With the arrival of summer temperatures across Croatia, the tourist season has unofficially begun. Since the global coronavirus pandemic severely impeded global travel for two years, there was a fear that Croatian tourism would also continue to experience a real fiasco, writes net.hr.
Fortunately, that didn’t happen. The reason is not some special campaign or vision of the Croatian Government but the country’s very lucky position. More precisely, the fact that Croatia very close to large markets from where tourists came to us in previous years. The coronavirus pandemic has proven that people feel the safest when travelling by car, at least as far as this contagion is concerned. In other words, destinations to which people can drive on their own have benefited. Countries to which people usually fly suffered, and Dubrovnik, separated from the rest of Croatia by Bosnia and Herzegovina’s only tiny piece of coastline (Neum), also suffered enormously.
Given the country’s location and relatively good road network and connectivity, the past two summer tourist seasons have been better than expected. Road connectivity should be even better in the future, as well. The Istrian Y should get another lane, and the Ucka tunnel will be further improved. The most famous road project in the country is certainly the Peljesac Bridge construction, which will unite not only Croatian but EU territory, cutting out the BiH border crossing entirely.
The bridge will be there, but it will also be crowded…
Back in 2017, a tender was announced, and in 2018, Peljesac bridge construction began. The Republic of Croatia was granted 330m euros to finance 85 percent of the Peljesac bridge construction costs, and the bridge has been built by the China Road and Bridge Corporation, which made a bid of 2 billion kuna, with a construction deadline of 36 months.
The works were slowed down by the coronavirus pandemic, but in July 2021, the last segment of the bridge was installed, and it was announced that the end of works on the bridge could be expected by the end of the year. At the beginning of 2022, the asphalt and other such equipment were installed on the huge structure, and a test load of the bridge was performed, which is why 21 trucks weighing up to 40 tonnes arrived at the Peljesac bridge construction site.
The problem has been the access roads with several viaducts and tunnels. The biggest challenge was the 485-metre-long Ston Bridge. Its specificity is that it will connect two tunnels above the Ston Bay, Polakovica, which is 1242 metres long, and Supava, which is 1290 metres long. The bridge has five pillars and two abutments, and is 40 metres high.
Ston Bridge has now been connected, but there is still a lot of work to be done on that section. A concrete slab is now to be built, which could take about four months, so that sometime in the autumn, perhaps come October or November, these works might also be completed.
When will Peljesac bridge actually be opened?
Peljesac bridge has passed a technical inspection and will be opened along with 20 kilometres of access roads in July this year. The other 10 kilometres of access roads and the Ston bypass will be completed by the end of the year. There will be a total of 32 kilometres of new state road, of which 25 should be ready by July the 15th. Unofficial information as to when the bridge will be open to the public is mid-July this year. Minister of Transport Oleg Butkovic was a little more specific and announced the opening on July the 15th to the 17th.
According to the contract, the workers of the aforementioned Chinese contractor will remain on the construction site until the commissioning of the Peljesac bridge with its accompanying access roads and the complete demobilisation and arrangement of the Peljesac bridge construction site. The contractor of the access roads is the Austrian company Strabag.
The suspended bridge spans a total length of 2404 metres with six main pillars and thirteen spans of steel which are 72 to 285 metres long, and was designed by Marjan Pipenbacher from the Slovenian company Ponting at a height of 55 metres. This was due to a request from neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina so that the unimpeded passage of ships to Neum could be met.
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