The Tuzla Canton continues to live and endure its road blockade. This blockade has been talked about for decades, but no concrete steps have been taken. Even this year, this canton will not see a foot of highway or expressway, and the people of Tuzla will still have to travel for hours to reach the capital city of Sarajevo.
According to the answer that BHRT received from the Public Company Highway of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Tuzla will continue to wait for the expressway to Orašje and will be traffic isolated, and drivers will still have to travel for up to an hour to cities 40 kilometers away.
From Tuzla to Sarajevo it still takes us two and a half to three hours to drive. Due to economic isolation, the Tuzla Canton loses up to 30 percent more investment in this area.
It is interesting that the authorities in TK all these years have never found an adequate interlocutor at the federal or state level of government, although there are many political officials from Tuzla who hold important positions in the institutions of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina or sit in the Parliament of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, on which the road infrastructure depends.
The Tuzla – Orašje highway will have strategic importance for the cities of the Posavina and Tuzla Cantons and the Brčko District. It will be connected to the pan-European corridor X that passes through Croatia, that is, the European Union. But for now it’s all just a dead letter. The construction of a highway in this area is not even in sight.
In 2024, the Tuzla Canton remained completely isolated in terms of traffic. Railway traffic has been completely shut down, airlines are canceling their cooperation with Tuzla International Airport, and patched and overcrowded highways remain a harsh reality that we will obviously drive for a long time.
