Romania’s Highways Company, subordinated to the Transport Ministry, opened yesterday a 15-km segment of the Lugoj-Deva highway.

The opened segment is unfinished and represents half of the fourth section of the whole Lugoj-Deva highway sector, which should have been completed by now, reports local Digi24.

The entire Lugoj-Deva highway has a length of 72 kilometers. The work has seen major delays. The construction work on the second lot began in 2013, and will be completed in March 2020, according to the latest information. This means that the work will take seven years.

Not even the segment opened yesterday is finished. It has become common in Romania not to respect the deadline for building highways and to inaugurate highway segments although they are not complete. The most famous example was that of the Sibiu-Orastie highway, opened in November 2014. The Italian firm Impregilo had warned that the work was not completed and that opening the traffic was risky. A segment of this road had to be closed less than a year after inauguration and rebuilt due to structural problems.

editor@romania-insider.com