Welcome to the Roadscapes Wednesday segment! Each week here on Geek Alabama, Roadscapes Wednesday will feature roads and infrastructure related topics. Geek Alabama Editor / Publisher Nathan Young is often called the “road geek” for a good reason, Nathan loves roads and loves talking about roads!
In this video from YouTube channel Niels on the Road you can drive along on Montenegro’s recently opened first motorway: The A1 E65 from Podgorica to Kolašin. This is a first 41 kilometer segment that was opened this summer.
Plans for a first motorway from the Adriatic Sea to the border with Serbia had been established for a while. After a lot of back and forth on the project and a lack of funding (the total project was estimated at 2.5 billion EUR), Montenegro turned to the Chinese and their well-known China Road and Bridge Corporation.
They effectively started work in 2015 after concluding the agreement in 2014. Excavation of most tunnels started around 2017-2018. As you will see in the video, there is quite an amount of tunnels and spectacular bridges on this stretch of Motorway. Montenegro’s geography is quite challenging, further bumping up the construction cost.
The future A1 is supposed to take travelers from the coastal city of Bar on the Adriatic Sea to the border with Serbia via the country’s capital Podgorica. Effectively the entire project is divided up in 3 phases, of which the middle phase now has been constructed. The total anticipated length of the motorway will be some 163 kilometers.
Categories: Roadscapes Stuff
