Crowds, slowness, breaking deadlines, landslides, heavy and frequent traffic jams. All these are the first associations with the quality of the road infrastructure in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although it swallowed billions of loans, grant funds and special taxes, it is still among the worst and most dangerous in the region.
Whoever you ask about the state of road infrastructure in Bosnia and Herzegovina, you will get the expected answers. Drivers and passengers, passengers and pedestrians are also dissatisfied.
Roads that kill, tunnels that are collapsing, trains that almost don’t run anywhere anymore, ports without ships and airports without domestic airlines… This is the backbone of traffic in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The government is trying to brighten up such a miserable state with the story of the construction of a high-ranking road – Corridor 5C, the completion of which is not even in sight. Everything that was done and is being done in this area, experts say, is wrong, superficial and small, except for the billions that are spent on modest results.
“In Bosnia and Herzegovina, some kind of studies, some kind of strategies, plans are being done permanently, but the problem is that it all does not end with action, that we are too complicated, that we have procedures that take years to start building something”, says Fadila Kiso from the Faculty of Transport and Communications at UNSA.
The reason for the chaotic situation in the field of road infrastructure can also be found in the lack of professional management of this department, says state parliamentarian Milan Dunović.
“We see that the ministers of transport both at the entity levels and at the state level do not really understand traffic. They think it is an interesting and easy branch. However, traffic is an industry and we need to take care of it. This has not been done in BiH for years and the result is what we have today,” Dunović points out.
That the situation in this area must change urgently is the message these days from Transportna zajednica.
“For the past 30 years, there has been no investment in the railways and it shows. The focus on the modernization of the railways is something that needs to be done both in terms of legislation, but also in the implementation of railway projects”, says Matej Zakonjšek from the Permanent Secretariat of the Transport Union.
Given the phenomenal geotraffic position of our country, experts suggest the construction of logistics platforms and terminals as just one of the possible advanced solutions.
“Be careful, these are large quantities of goods that we could process and where we could have very good incomes,” notes Kiso.
Revival of river traffic is also one of the ideas from which much is expected in the coming period. At least as much as Corridor 5C, which after two decades is barely halfway there, BHRT writes.
