For years announced and repeatedly postponed removal Old Sava bridge there are no more obstacles. The Ministry of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure issued a permit for his demolition, and on November 1, this road that has been bridging the Sava for more than 80 years will be closed to traffic, announced Politics.
How states this paper, the fact that all obstacles to its dismantling in order to build a new arch bridge with a higher traffic capacity have been formally removed, does not mean that the removal of the Old Sava Bridge will begin immediately, but that the work will most likely be started next year. Because, as Politika learns from the engineer involved in the preparation of technical documentation, both for the old and for the new bridge, demanding works must first be carried out around the columns of the old bridge and on the access roads on both sides of the river before the recognizable green arched structure can be taken down and moved to a temporary construction site, a fenced area between the Stari Sava and Branko bridges.
"Dismantling is a very complex job and it will be done carefully, which means that the existing bridge will not be drilled or cut, but will be removed in one piece from the pillars to the shore on the construction site where it will be disassembled into parts and then it will be sailed down the river to somewhere else places, but where exactly, I don't know", indicated the interlocutor of Politika, adding that requests for the issuance of a construction permit for the new Sava bridge and for access roads in the old part of the city and on the New Belgrade side.
What can be seen on the ground for some time is that a construction plateau is being extensively built on the left bank of the Sava, which, as Politika reminds, should first be thoroughly examined in order to determine that there are no explosive devices left on the ground. This newspaper also states that a barge from Holland is waiting to transport the bridge to the coast, as well as that containers for engineers and workers engaged in this project will be placed in the fenced area next month.
How big will the guild be?
The task of designing the new bridge was given to the Faculty of Technical Sciences from Novi Sad, Mostogradnja ing doo, Millenium team and IO Designe enterprise from Belgrade. The contractor is PowerChina, and expert supervision will be performed by Louis Berger Adria and CPM consulting.
Let us remind you that the fact that the Old Sava bridge will be removed, and not rebuilt and extended, as the then mayor Sinisa Mali had announced until then, became clear in the spring of 2017. Five and a half years later, the public found out how much it would cost to demolish and build a new steel bridge in its place. In the fall of 2022, the Serbian Parliament adopted a proposal for a law on the confirmation of a loan agreement of EUR 79,9 million. The government signed a loan agreement with the China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation with the BNP Paribas group. The total value of the design and construction work, as it was pointed out at the time, was determined to be EUR 94 million, and this is the amount that will be paid to the contractor, the Chinese company Power China. A maximum of 85% of the total value of the work is financed from the loan, as foreseen and announced at the time.
In the draft text of that law, among other things, it was written that the variable interest rate at which Serbia borrows is Euribor plus a margin of 1,05%, that the loan will be repaid over seven years in 14 equal half-yearly installments, and that the loan should be withdraw within three years from the entry into force of the loan agreement. However, it was not specified at that time how much of the almost EUR 80 million debt will go to the construction of a new bridge, and how much to the demolition of the existing one, as well as whether the construction of access roads from New Belgrade and the old part of the capital is included in that amount.
As stated earlier on the "Srbija2027" website, the construction of the bridge should be completed in 2027.
Public and experts against demolition
Let's remind while the demolition of the Old Sava Bridge is desired and announced by the competent ministers and the city government, the public and experts are trying to preserve it alive.
Last summer, the so-called "Russian proposal" appeared, the first to propose that the bridge be preserved without coming from the opposition side.
Namely, the eight-member team of Icarus, a community of urban activists in which there are about three hundred Russian architects and designers currently working in Belgrade, proposed a solution according to which the Sava Bridge should not be demolished, but integrated into the Old Fair Memorial Complex with simple solutions.
After that, those who wanted to destroy it became less noisy. Now the President of the Republic has announced a compromise: the Sava Bridge will not be demolished, it will only be moved two kilometers further. I guess that is enough so that Belgrade on the water is not bothered by the noise from vehicles crossing it, which was one of the important reasons of those who advocated for its demolition.
Source: Politics
