Bulgaria's Traffic Headache

The Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev recently turned over the first spadefuls of soil on a new highway linking the outskirts of the capital Sofia with a key European transport route.

The Ljulin highway is part of EU plans to develop transit corridors in central and eastern Europe. The road will cost 148 million euros ($195 million) -- 111 million euros of which is being supplied by the EU.

According to the Bulgarian government, Ljulin will kill two birds with one stone. It will replace a lethal stretch of road leading into Sofia from the southwest, and at the same time, speed up and improve traffic along one of Europe's major transport routes.

"At this moment, there's just one street which passes two big villages near Sofia, Vladaja and Kolovo, where there are a lot of accidents," said Ivan Ivanov, who is in charge of national road infrastructure at Bulgaria's Ministry of Transport. He said the government was certain the Ljulin highway would help alleviate traffic problems in Sofia.

Environmental groups concerned about pollution

After years of planning, the 19-kilometers-long Ljulin highway -- subcontracted to a Turkish-Bulgarian joint venture -- will become reality in a few years. The project reaches from the very western tip of Sofia and links up to another major road, which leads down to a major route to Thessaloniki. It will take a lot of the road traffic, trucks and cars that lead up from the Greek port through Bulgaria, past Sofia and onwards to northern and western Europe.

But the project has its opponents.

"This highway would not solve the problem of heavy transport, and even in the forecasts of the government, the traffic through this district would increase in the next 10 years by more than 50 percent," said Ivaylo Chlebanov from the environmental group Za Zemiata, or "For the Earth."

Chlebanov said the other main concern was that of air pollution.

"There would be much more air pollution, which would go to one of the best spa resorts near Sofia called Banke, and would pollute the air there, as well," Chlebanov said.

Yet highways are a fact of life and are part of modern Europe. People rely on them to get themselves and goods around. So, if you have to put it somewhere, you have to damage the environment somewhere, and you have to interfere with people's lives, somewhere. If not Ljulin, where?

"We proposed that an alternative should be assessed that would be much further west than Sofia," Chlebanov said. "There is less population there and it would actually lead the heavy truck traffic out of Sofia."

Has Sofia become the Los Angeles of Eastern Europe?

It's certainly hard to deny that Sofia does have a severe problem. Driving through the Bulgarian capital, you'd be forgiven for thinking you were driving through Los Angeles -- the traffic is so intense. Cars are parked sideways on the sidewalk, and pedestrians are forced to pick their way gingerly between them.

"We are not agreed that this highway will be a real solution to regional traffic," said Petko Kovatchev from the Green Policy Institute. "During the debates, we proposed the improvement of railroad to be assessed as part of the solution, too. Unfortunately no one appeared with a strategic approach."

But go to any European capital -- whether it's Paris, Berlin or London -- and you see pretty much the same thing. Cars today are just a fact of life. So why should Bulgaria or Sofia be any different? Kovatchev agreed that the problem was everywhere.

"But on the other side, we see the example of London, where the congestion tax increased the ability for better transportation in the center and the quality of the air has been improved," Kovatchev said. "So I think there are possibilities to implement measures, which would make the situation better."

Bulgarians aren't actively supporting environmental issues

A major obstacle to opposing the Ljulin highway is that the environmental movement in Bulgaria is really not very strong at all.

"On the one side, there are a lot of people who are unhappy about the situation," Kovatchev said. "On the other side, people in general are quite tired from all this transition period."

He said many people didn't believe that if they protested or signed petitions, they could influence decision-makers.

"Many people stay in this latent situation," Kovatchev said. "They are unhappy with what is going on, but on the other side, they don't believe they could change anything."

Sofia's marginalized environmental lobby has a whole host of objections to the Ljulin highway, from claims the Bulgarian government fudged the public consultation process to obtain an Environmental Impact Assessment, to arguing that Ljulin was sold to the EU as part of a European transit corridor -- whereas it's really just an attempt to develop the outskirts of Sofia.

The Transport Ministry has rejected all those accusations, and promises Ljulin will improve the capital's traffic problems and ease the flow of traffic on a key EU transit route.

Whoever's right, one thing is for sure: Sofia is choking in exhaust fumes, and its traffic headache is not going to go away any time soon.