MINSK, 8 April (BelTA) – The tender for reconstructing the M7 Minsk-Vilnius motorway will be opened in mid-April. Offers will be accepted after that, BelTA learned from Aleksandr Golovnev, Head of the Central Office for Automobile Roads of the Belarusian Transport and Communications Ministry, on 8 April.
The official said: “An international tender for reconstructing the M7 Minsk-Vilnius motorway and the border checkpoint Kamenny Log will be opened in mid-April. The road is about 90km long. It will be upgraded to the second category and will have reinforced shoulders.” The European Investment Bank has allocated funds for reconstructing the road. Work will begin in summer and is supposed to be finished by May 2021.
A tender for repairing bridges will be opened soon. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has lent €259 million to Belarus for modernizing 12 bridges and the M3 Minsk-Vitebsk motorway.
Negotiations are in progress with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) on reconstructing the P46 motorway Lepel – Polotsk – the Russian border. “The project is in the initial negotiation phase. A loan is possible. Terms of the loan have been determined. We intend to sign the loan agreement by the end of the year,” Aleksandr Golovnev added.
Belarus and Poland intend to start building a new bridge over the Zapadny Bug River at the border checkpoint Domachevo-Slawatycze in 2020. An intergovernmental agreement has been signed. The cost of the project is evenly split between Belarus and Poland.
Speaking about the technologies being adopted in the course of road construction, Aleksandr Golovnev noted that they are designed to improve the quality of the road surface and the longevity of roads. “When we pave with asphalt, we switch to using material transfer vehicles. The technology greatly improves the smoothness and evenness of the road surface. As for concrete pavements, we increasingly adopt the so-called washed concrete technology, which improves adhesive qualities of the surface and reduces its noise level,” he said.
Belarusian road construction companies also increasingly resort to mixing the installation of precast components and monolithic concrete operations in the course of building bridges. “The bridge beam is precast and assembled on the spot with a monolithic slab on top of it. It gives us the strength of monolithic concrete at a reduced cost,” Aleksandr Golovnev explained.
