The new motorway section in Northern Transylvania was built in solo, but it could help traffic in Transylvania

The section of the Northern Transylvania motorway between Berettyószéplak and Szilágynagyfalu was opened to traffic on Thursday. The section of the motorway between Berettyószéplak in Bihor county and Szilágynagyfalu in Szilágy county was built by the Turkish company Nurol. The project cost RON 384.14 million (HUF 29.2 billion) and took around two years to complete.

The section of the North Transylvania motorway that has just been opened is not yet connected to the previously completed motorway sections. At the same time, it will make life easier for those travelling on the Gyalu-Zilah-Margitta-Szeljeljí Bridge-Debrecen corridor, which is an alternative to the heavily congested Highway 1 linking Oradea with the motorway starting at Gyalu.

The new section is currently connected to the county road 19B in the village of Márkaszék in Silajdo county by a temporary exit.

The western continuation project is stalled, while public procurement is underway for the neighbouring section to the east

The motorway section opened on Thursday will be continued towards Oradea and the Hungarian-Romanian border with the Berettyószéplak-Bistraterebes section, whose public procurement has stalled after two companies protested against the result. Towards Cluj Napoca, it will join the Szilágynagyfalu-Vaskapu section of the motorway, for which the public procurement procedure is ongoing. Here 41 km will be built, including the tunnel under the Meské Mountains.

The opening of a 13.5-kilometre stretch of motorway brings the total length of motorways and expressways in Romania to 1,004 kilometres, according to Cristian Pistol, CEO of the National Road Infrastructure Company (CNAIR).

In Romania, the construction of the first motorway between Bucharest and Pitesti began 56 years ago, on 4 February 1967. The 96-kilometre-long dual carriageway took five years to build and was opened to traffic on 12 April 1972.