Arrangement of a grade-separated crossing in Murska Sobota
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Murska Sobota is a regional business and economic centre whose urban development has been always influenced by traffic routes. In the Middle Ages, it linked German lands with Hungary; today, the railway line which is a part of the Fifth European Rail Corridor Lyon – Trieste – Ljubljana – Budapest – Ukrainian border passes through. The busy regional road called Lendavska cesta is used daily by over 25.000 vehicles, which is a major traffic burden for a town with slightly more than 12,000 inhabitants.
The project of the arrangement of a grade-separated junction of Lendavska cesta with the railway line was divided in three stages; the investment was initiated in 2000, when the pre-investment plan for the arrangement of the junction was made and confirmed, including a comparison of four versions of the grade-separated junction. It was followed by the purchase of land and project documentation in 2004; due to the complexity of the project, the construction was organised in three stages, which took place from January 2006 to May 2010. The total investment cost of the entire project was 12.5 million euros.
In addition to the reconstruction of a section of Lendavska cesta, the first stage involved the construction of four replacement bridges and the execution of water management arrangements to enable the construction of the pass under the railway line.
This was followed by the construction and arrangement of five bypass roads to meet the needs of the implementation of works within the framework of the third stage. This stage involved the reconstruction of two junctions.
The third stage, which was co-financed by the resources from the European Regional Development Fund to the amount of 4.3 million euros, consisted of the construction of the railway overpass on Lendavska cesta and a roundabout, and the reconstruction of Lendavska and Industrijska cesta.
Although the new grade-separated junction has eliminated bottlenecks and considerably reduced travel times, the roadblocks and bypasses during the works required a great deal of patience from users. The Slovene Roads Agency therefore stepped up its activities in the field of information before the initiation of construction of the third stage and every household in the municipality received a booklet with precise information on the project and the time frame of its implementation. The residents of the part of the town in which the construction site was located had continuous access to additional information and the media were regularly provided with information on the progress of works and the expected release of traffic. The Agency stressed in particular that this was a project funded by the European Regional Development Fund. When the construction was concluded, it prepared a new brochure, which presented residents with the chronology of the project and acquainted them with the amount of resources earmarked for the project by Murska Sobota municipality, the Slovene Roads Agency and the European Regional Development Fund.
