Financiarul

The 1.25 kilometres long Baneasa road underpass opened on Friday, three years after the project had started, with more than 13 million euros having being assigned from the budget for the project meant to smooth traffic in northern Bucharest.

“I am glad that a road is finally completed and that traffic starts as a result of infrastructure projects”, Transport and Infrastructure Minister Radu Berceanu said at the opening of the underpass.
The 1.25 km long underpass was designed by Romanian company Search Corporation and was built by Portuguese company Lena. The project was launched in early 2007, but the works proper began as late as after mid-2008.

The project was originally scheduled to be commissioned at the end of 2007. According to figures supplied by the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, the construction works entailed the re-location of 1.4 km of water supply pipes, 1.8 km of household water supply networks, 1.25 km of gas pipes, 61 km of electricity supply networks, 4 km of public lighting installations and 42 km of telecommunications networks.
A combined 25 km of shafts were drilled in order to build the underpass, for which 25,000 cubic meters of concrete and 12,000 cubic meters of ballast was also used.

The underpass built at Bucharest’ main exit to northern country was designed to provide the motorists the possibility to turn in order to reach Otopeni Airport, to build lanes at the underpass’s upper level and a traffic circle, to build a central round area of 16 meter radius and 14 meter wide roadway.
Minister Berceanu proposed the government in February 2007 to begin the works on Baneasa underpass, arguing that if the construction began on March 1, 2007 it could be completed by December 1, 2007.

New Transport Minister Ludovic Orban announced the beginning of the works in May 2008. The general work contractor SC Lena Enghenharia e Construcoes SA received an order to start the works on May 5, 2008, with the works proper kicking off on June 17; the project should have been completed in about a year, i.e. by June 2009.

The Romanian officials later announced that the works on Baneasa underpass on the country’s main DN1 highway will be delayed, given that several approvals from the Bucharest City Hall still had to be issued in order to move utilities and to carry out expropriations. In this February, Transport Minister Berceanu said he hoped the works would wrap up in September or October, and afterwards he put forward a new deadline: December 1.