The Main Railway Station Belgrade Center in Prokop was opened to traffic on Tuesday, nearly 40 years after the start of its construction, Tanjug has reported.
It is expected that the complete relocation of the current main station, located in central Belgrade, to Prokop, will take about a year.
Currently, 105 city railway (BG:Voz) trains will continue to use Prokop, while a new Belgrade-Novi Sad-Belgrade line has now been added.
Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic on Tuesday attended a ceremony marking the completion of the first stage of the construction of the future Belgrade Center Main Station.
Vucic marked the opening by arriving with his aides on a new Stadler train, which will be connecting Belgrade and Novi Sad.
The completion of this phase of construction works means that eight out of ten tracks, and five out of six platforms are now in use. The money for the contract worth EUR 25.8 million was secured from a loan taken from the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development.
The work to reconstruct the Belgrade Center Station in Prokop started in December 2014. The next phase will see the construction of the station building, the traffic and passenger access from highway E-75 and city roads, and accompanying infrastructure.
There are also plans to build an upper floor of the station spreading on some 100,000 sq meters for commercial and other purposes.
The idea to build the station first emerged in 1974, while works in the field launched three years later, only to be stopped soon due to a lack of funding. Works resumed in the 1990s, but were halted again in 2000.
The Prokop Station is a part of the Belgrade Railway Hub and represents the center of the railway network of Serbia.
Source; B92
