Grindeanu’s announcement comes as the 2.2km-long steel truss Friendship Bridge, connecting Giurgiu in Romania and Ruse in Bulgaria, is closed for repairs. Romania is setting up a temporary vehicle ferry service across the river. He expects that a new bridge would double the traffic volume across the river and be built with European Union funding.
Work started this summer on the 1.1km-long Bulgarian section of the bridge, and it could be closed for nearly two years with periodic single lane openings, according to Bulgaria’s Road Infrastructure Agency. It is estimated that up to 250 trucks a day would have to use the ferry service. The deck slab and asphalt will be replaced and all metal elements connected to the road section will be renovated.
When the Soviet-designed Friendship Bridge opened in 1954 it was the only bridge over the Danube shared by Bulgaria and Romania. It is more often now called simply the Danube Bridge. The Bulgarian part of the bridge was closed for repairs for two months in mid-2011. It has two lanes, a rail line and pedestrian paths. The central 85m section – which is Romania’s responsibility to maintain - is moveable to allow passage of tall ships.
A second Danube crossing, called New Europe Bridge or Danube Bridge 2, is a road and rail structure between the cities of Vidin in Bulgaria and Calafat, Romania. The extradosed bridge was built by the Spanish company Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas at the cost of €226 million and opened in 2013.
