President of the Republic of Serbia and the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure, Zorana Mihajlović, together with H.E. Ambassador of PR China Chen Bo, the Acting Director of the PE “Roads of Serbia“, Zoran Drobnjak, and the General Manager of the Chinese company “Shandong”, Zhang Jianchao, attended the commencement of works on the construction of the new expressway Lajkovac – Iverak on 17th June, 2020.
„People will get to Belgrade from Valjevo in less than an hour, new investors will come to Valjevo, there will be new job posts. Each new result requires new efforts. And today’s results can be measured and compared to earlier and future ones. Our aim is to bring people back to Valjevo and the Kolubara district, which gained a lot with new roads. In two and a half years, we will de facto go to Valjevo using a highway.”, President Vučić said.
Minister Mihajlović said that Serbia was a different country in comparison with the one from a few years back, mostly because of the large infrastructural projects that have been completed and also that, by building an expressway, Valjevo would connect with the motorway “Miloš Veliki“ .
When the construction works on the expressway Iverak – Lajkovac are completed, journey from Belgrade to Valjevo will last 35 minutes. The total length of the section is 18.3 kilometres, and the works, executed by the Chinese company "China Shandong", in accordance with the state agreement between China and Serbia, are worth 158 million euros.
The expressway has been designed for the speed of up to 100 kilometres per hour.
There will be 25 structures on the route, 2.5 km of bridges and one interchange.
An integral part of the project is also a complete landscaping of the river Kolubara and waterways, which will prevent further flooding of this part of Serbia.
