2024-09-29 09:11:30
The Metropolitan Municipality forces us to think about vignettes of the Ring Road. Our disputes are deepening, but API, as always before, is ready for dialogue and we expect a partnership attitude. This is what the head of the Road Infrastructure Agency (API) Eng. Yordan Valchev told “24 Chasa”.
Earlier in the day, the API announced that it may be forced to introduce vignettes for the ring road, because the municipality is delaying the agreement on the joint operation of this road, and the disputes over who should repair the overpass at the clover for the “Boyana” quarter continue. From For now, the capital municipality only comments that they are aware of the warning.
The disputes turn out to be two years old, explained Engineer Valchev. The capital municipality did not pay API a contribution of about BGN 1.5 million for the maintenance of the ring road for last year, nor for this year, and by the end of 2024 it will owe about BGN 3 million.
This is money that the municipality has been paying since the time when the vignettes were introduced. In principle, the ring road plus the northern speed tangent, but without the northern arc of the ring road, are part of the national road network, while all local lanes are municipal.
However, with a decision of the Council of Ministers from 5 years ago, the vignettes for this road as well as for the ring roads of Plovdiv, Burgas and several other large cities were removed, and the same decision obliges the relevant municipalities to pay the API every year for emergency maintenance and winter snow removal . The price is determined per kilometer and, according to Engineer Valchev, the obligation of the Metropolitan Municipality is calculated for about BGN 1.5 million per year.
However, this is not the case with the southern arc of the ring road, where it is the other way around, because it is on an urbanized territory – there API pays the municipality to maintain this section.
However, this dispute is intertwined with the dispute over the overpass for “Boyana”. It is in a very bad condition and needs to be repaired, but according to the cadastre, half of the facility falls on municipal land, and the other half – on state land.
“Cadastral errors are corrected very slowly, and we asked the municipality to sign a memorandum of agreement a few months ago so that we could start the repairs. Instead, they recently sent us an order to carry out the repairs, which we appealed in court, because I cannot repair something that is on municipal land,” explained Engineer Valchev.
He reassured that these disputes would not affect the maintenance of the perimeter – there would be winter snow removal and emergency maintenance. But according to him, the Metropolitan Municipality is acting recklessly and this is fueling the tension.