Pelješac bridge

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Pelješac Bridge
Carries	4-lane wide roadway
Crosses	Neretva channel / Mali Ston bay
Locale	South-east Croatia
Design	Cable-stayed bridge
Longest span	568 metres (1,860 ft)
Total length	2,374 metres (7,790 ft)
Width	21 metres (69 ft)
Clearance below	55 metres (180 ft)

The Pelješac bridge is a bridge intended to connect the Croatian peninsula of Pelješac with the Croatian mainland, spanning the bay between the two.

Because the Croatian mainland is intersected by a small strip of the coast around the town of Neum which is part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the bridge would also physically connect the southernmost part of Dalmatia with the rest of Croatia.

1 Characteristics
2 Construction
3 Criticisms
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Characteristics

The new Pelješac bridge will be a 2,374-meter (7,790 ft) long, 55-meter (180 ft) high beam and cable-stayed bridge, with a main span of 568 metres (1,860 ft). It will be 21 metres (69 ft) wide, enough to accommodate 4 lanes of traffic. This span will be the second largest in Europe. The two pylons will be 115 metres (380 ft) above the road deck, 170 metres (560 ft) above sea level, and 240 metres (790 ft) above the seabed. The beam part of the bridge will be composed of 10 smaller pylons, each built at 180 metres (590 ft) apart, with a span of 180 meters. The whole bridge will be the 18th longest in Europe.

Beside the construction of the bridge, there will be construction of accessing roads at the both sides of the bridge, including 2 tunnels on Peljesac (one 2,170 metres (7,120 ft) and other 450 metres (1,480 ft) long) as well as two smaller bridges on Peljesac, (one 500 metres (1,600 ft) and another 50 metres (160 ft) long).

It has not yet been announced whether the bridge will form a part of the A1 highway, currently connecting Zagreb and Šestanovac. Because the Croatian territory on the route from Neum to Dubrovnik is a fairly narrow strip of land, albeit implausible, it is not impossible that the highway would be built inland, in Herzegovina, with connections to the coast. Currently, the road from Ploče via the bridge towards Dubrovnik is planned to be a highway. However, the road from Dubrovnik to Debeli Brijeg (border crossing with Montenegro) is not planned as a highway but as an expressway, and even that route is not strictly defined yet.

[edit] Construction

Croatian minister of infrastructure Božidar Kalmeta said in May 2007 that preparations for the construction of the bridge were going according to plan, and that an initial tender was under preparation. Kalmeta added that the question of when the construction works will begin depends on whether a constructor would be selected in the first round.^[1]

On June 11, 2007, Croatian Roads announced a public tender for the construction of the bridge. On August 28, the list of bidders was released:

Konstruktor inženjering, Viadukt and Hidroelektra (from Croatia)
Dywidag (Germany), Strabag (Austria), Cimola (Italy), Eiffel (France)
Alpina Bau (from Salzburg, Austria)

Kalmeta confirmed construction works should start in Autumn 2007. The contractor is obliged to complete the project in four years. Construction costs were estimated at HRK 1.9 billion, nearly 260 million euros.^[2] Kalmeta's estimate about the building cost from late August was "under 300 million euros".

The construction will be financed by Croatian Roads and by loans by European investment banks.^[2]

On September 14, 2007, the Ministry of Construction announced that the Konstruktor/Viadukt/Hidroelektra consortium won the contest and that they will sign a contract for 1,945,388,829.86 kuna, or roughly 265 million euros at the time.

Construction works began on October 24th, 2007.

[edit] Criticisms

The idea that a large bridge should connect Pelješac with the mainland has caused concern among the ecological activists in Croatia, who opposed it because a potential damage to the sea life in the bay of Mali Ston, as well as the mariculture.^[3]

The idea was also opposed on various economical reasons - whether such a bridge is really necessary as opposed to making a different deal with Bosnia and Herzegovina,^[4] whether it is too expensive if built according to ecological demands, or whether it is best replaced with an undersea tunnel.^[5]

The construction of the bridge also caused problems with the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina. They opposed the building of the bridge, originally planned to be only 35 meters high, because it would have made it impossible for large ships to enter Neum. Although the harbour of Neum currently cannot be used for commercial traffic, the Bosnian government declared that in the future a new harbour might be built, and that the construction of the bridge would harm this ambition.

Prime minister Ivo Sanader persisted with the bridge idea, appeasing the BiH side by changing the design of the bridge to the current plans. The two sides agreed on the construction of the bridge in early December 2006. In June 2007, after the tender was published, the media reported renewed opposition from the Bosnia and Herzegovina State Border Commission. In early July 2007, Haris Silajdžić stated that members of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina thought that the bridge should be built only after the sea border is determined. Bosnia and Herzegovina current official statement is, that they will sue Croatia, if the bridge is really built unilaterally.^[6]