The railway connecting Bulgaria’s second-biggest city Plovdiv with the Greek and Turkish borders is now completely modernized, Transport Minister Ivaylo Moskovski said.
Under a project using EU funding, several sections of the railway have been fully overhauled to meet present-day standards, with Moskovski and Prime Minister Boyko Borisov taking a trip from the southern Bulgarian town of Lyubimets (whose train station has also been upgraded) to the border town of Svilengrad, located immediately next to the point where the borders of Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece meet.
”Today we are launching the train which reaches 226 kmh and has an average speed of 170 kmh. You will see that in about two years we will go to the sea or to Istanbul with high-speed Wi-Fi in our compartments, but to this end we will have to raise more money for new locomotives,” the local media quotes Prime Minister Borisov as saying.
The modernization project between Plovdiv and Svilengrad had cost BGN 424 million (EUR 217 million) and had been carried out under Operation Program Transport for the 2007-2013 period.
Railway infrastructure will now have to be overhauled between Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, and the border with Serbia, Moskovski added.
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