Six port multimodal corridor between Greece and Bulgaria

Thessaloniki, Greece (PortSEurope) July 17, 2017 - By the end of July, Greece and Bulgaria will sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the development of a multimodal transport corridor between the Aegean ports of Thessaloniki, Kavala and Alexandropoulos and the ports of Burgas and Varna on the Black Sea. The network will also include the port of Ruse (Rousse) on the Danube River. The project includes the construction of a double-track electrified fast railway line with an integrated European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) and further development of the ports, which are part of the pan-European Corridor VII, part of the TEN-T transport network. The multimodal corridor will be jointly managed by Greece and Bulgaria. According to Bulgarian transport minister Ivaylo Moskovski, the European Investment Bank (EIB) is expected to show interest in the project, which could be part-financed with EU funds. The total investment amount is still not clear, but the implementation of the project is expected to take between five and seven years. The working name of the project, first announced in 2015, is Sea2Sea The railway corridor between the two countries will provide further development of the ports as logistics platforms and will contribute to the economic recovery of south-east Europe. It is foreseen that this new railway connection would provide an alternative route for cargo transport to the congested Bosporus Strait. Most proposals for the modernization of the freight transport systems, analysed within the Sea2Sea project, have direct effect over the pan-European transport network and need major investments which cannot be justified by a cost-benefit analysis only of the freight transport flows estimated by the Sea2Sea project. For this reason, a limited number of projects have been proposed for the first phase of the Sea2Sea corridor, while the rest of the projects are to be implemented in the phases two to four. Estimates are for a massive freight flow increase between Alexandropoulos (Greece) and Bulgaria's second largest city of Plovdiv, which gives this part of the corridor a priority. The future corridor will include road, rail, sea and river transport, and a shortcut to the countries along the Danube. The total cost of the feasibility study for the corridor was €1.5 million ($1.72 million), of which the European Union contributed €750,000 ($858,000). The project is expected to attract large investor interest from the Middle East, China and Russia. The transport ministers of Greece and Bulgaria are discussing also adoption of common standards for port, rail and multimodal services between the two countries in order to reduce the administrative burden and greatly facilitate business. Source: Club Z

Six port multimodal corridor between Greece and Bulgaria

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Six port multimodal corridor between Greece and Bulgaria

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