Kosovo's highway and bridge construction on target

In Kosovo, work is pushing ahead of schedule on the Route 7 highway to link capital Pristina with the Albanian border. Sections of the 120km highway have been opened, one year ahead of schedule. An official opening of several sections of the highway has been carried out by Kosovan leaders, including Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi, President Atifete Jahjaga, and members of Parliament, along with Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha and US representatives Eliot Engel (D- NY) and Gary Peters (D-MI) joined thousan
May 4, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
The bridges for Kosovo's Route 7 Highway are being built along modular lines with standardised 40m pre-cast concrete beams being installed over the top of the piers
In Kosovo, work is pushing ahead of schedule on the Route 7 highway to link capital Pristina with the Albanian border.

Sections of the 120km highway have been opened, one year ahead of schedule. An official opening of several sections of the highway has been carried out by Kosovan leaders, including Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi, President Atifete Jahjaga, and members of Parliament, along with Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha and US representatives Eliot Engel (D- NY) and Gary Peters (D-MI) joined thousands of Kosovans to celebrate at an opening ceremony.

The project is being carried out by US/Turkish joint venture partners 4138 Bechtel and 5252 Enka, with construction having commenced in the second quarter of 2010. Funding for the project has come from the Kosovan Government itself and route optimisation work by Bechtel-Enka managed to avoid the need for boring twin tube tunnels to the south east of Pristina.

Instead the main Route 7 highway joins with the M9 dual carriageway to the south west of the city, which was built recently by a local contractor. This modified route reduced construction costs for the Route 7 project considerably, a major factor in Bechtel-Enka winning the contract.

The motorway is scheduled for completion in 2013. A full report on this project will be published in the Jan/Feb issue of World Highways.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Korean bridge construction poses challenges
    February 23, 2012
    On South Korea's southern coast, an innovative highway sea crossing is providing many engineering challenges
    Read More
  • Korean bridge construction poses challenges
    April 5, 2012
    On South Korea's southern coast, an innovative highway sea crossing is providing many engineering challenges The new Busan-Geoje crosses from South Korea's second city to its biggest island and is slightly shorter than the 12km of the country's famous Incheon project. In addition the main cable stay bridge for the Busan-Geoje project has a 475m span rather than the 800m of the Incheon central span. However the 8.2km Busan-Geoje project faces perhaps greater technical challenges and also includes a second b
    Read More
  • State-of-the art road tunnels in construction and use of ITS
    April 25, 2013
    A wealth of major road tunnel construction projects and significant cant ITS installations within existing key road tunnels have been recently completed or will soon be underway. Guy Woodford examines some of them. A state-of-the art Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) - the 10th largest ever to be built worldwide will be put to work later this year on New Zealand Transport Agency’s landmark Waterview Connection project in Auckland. The giant Herrenknecht-manufactured machine will be used to construct the twin 2.5
    Read More
  • Kenyan key contract being built by Bechtel
    August 9, 2017
    Bechtel has won a major project to build and important highway link in Kenya. This will be the first long stretch of high-speed expressway in Kenya and will connect the capital, Nairobi, with the country’s main port, Mombasa. The project for the 473km connection is being supported with financing from US and UK sources. Once the new route is open to traffic, journeys between Nairobi will take just four hours by road, instead of 10 at present.
    Read More

Highlighted Content