The Belgrade.Novi Sad high.speed railway has been opened to traffic
The Belgrade-Novi Sad railway, within the Belgrade-Budapest international railway, was opened to traffic today, and the first high-speed train on the route called “Soko” included Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and members of the Serbian government.During the drive to Novi Sad, the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, estimated that the high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest will enable a new era in the relations between Serbia and Hungary.

“This will further bring Serbia and Hungary closer. Budapest will be from Belgrade for two hours and 40 minutes when the railway is completed,” he said.

He pointed out that it would mean a lot for the development of business ties between the South and Central Europe.

The Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, said that he believes that if the two countries cooperate with each other, they have a better chance of succeeding in the future.

He pointed out that Vučić and he had invested a lot of effort over the past years in order to rebuild the friendship between Serbs and Hungarians.

“It is a completely new approach,” Orban said, adding that it is the way in which the relations between the two countries should develop.

The Prime Minister of Serbia, Ana Brnabić, said that she was proud of the project and pointed out that the quality of life of Serbian citizens would be further improved when it was possible to travel from Belgrade to Niš and Preševo ​​in this way.

The leader of the Association of Vojvodina Hungarians and the President of the Assembly of Vojvodina, Istvan Pastor, said that this project of connecting Belgrade and Budapest is a symbol of friendship.

“These are very important steps in the realization of this general intention that this is a new quality in the everyday life of citizens. This is one of the many endeavors we are working on together,” Pastor said.

The construction of the section of the railway from Belgrade to Novi Sad began at the end of 2017, for trains with a speed of 200 kilometers per hour, and it cost around 935 million dollars.

Regular passenger traffic on the Belgrade-Novi railway line, 74.9 kilometers long, will start tomorrow, and the ticket in the promotional period, which lasts until April 30, will cost 300 dinars one way, while children under seven will not pay for transportation.

The 34.5-kilometer section of the Belgrade Center Stara Pazova was built with a loan from the Chinese Exim Bank, and the value of the contract was $ 350.1 million. The contractor was the Chinese consortium “China Railway International” and “China Communications Construction Company”.

On the section of Stara Pazova Novi Sad, in the length of 40.4 kilometers, the works were performed by the Russian company “RZD International”, and the total value of that project is 585.5 million dollars. Funding was provided from a Russian loan for the modernization of Serbian railways.

On the high-speed railway, passengers will be transported by an older type of electric motor set, as well as two new “Stadler” double-decker sets with 314 seats.

The full price of the return ticket, as previously announced, should be 1,600 dinars, and in one direction 1,000 dinars.

Every day there will be 18 departures from both cities, the first at 5.25 from Belgrade, and at 5.28 from Novi Sad. The last train will depart at 22.02 from Novi Sad, and at 22.20 from the station Belgrade-Center, ie from Prokop.

There will be three types of trains: “Intercity”, “Regio-Express” and “Regio”, which will differ in the number of stations where they will stop, and thus in the duration of travel between the two cities.

“Interesting trains” will be the fastest and will arrive at its destination in 36 minutes, as it will have only one intermediate station, in New Belgrade.

The journey by “Regio-Express” will last 49 minutes, and the train will stop at seven intermediate stations: New Belgrade, Batajnica, Nova Pazova, Stara Pazova, Indjija, Beska, Sremski Karlovci.

The slowest will be “Regio trains” which will travel 55 to 57 minutes and will stop at 11 intermediate stations: New Belgrade, Tosin Bunar, Zemun, Zemun Polje, Batajnica, Nova Pazova, Stara Pazova, Indjija, Beska, Sremski Karlovci and Petrovaradin.

The trains will develop the highest speed of 200 kilometers per hour in the part from the Batajnica station to the Karlovacki Vinogradi crossroads, in the length of 41.4 kilometers.

For the works on the third section of the high-speed railway from Novi Sad to the border crossing Kelebija with Hungary, in the length of 108.2 kilometers, which already started last November, the funds were provided from a Chinese loan, and should be completed in three years. Construction will cost $ 1.2 billion.

The construction of the Belgrade-Budapest railway will cost around four billion euros in total.

It is one of the first projects within the Chinese global initiative “Belt and Road”, agreed as a joint project of China, Serbia and Hungary.

The Belgrade-Novi Sad railway has been closed since February 2019 due to reconstruction.

By Editor

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