This December, the construction for the expansion of the Sofia Metro system will commence from Hotel Hemus in the district of Lozenets to Sofia central railway station.

This was said by the director of the unit overseeing the distribution of European Union funds under operational programme Transport, Neli Yordanova, at a briefing for journalists that was held in the north Bulgarian town of Vidin, website stroitelstvo.bg reported.

The construction project will be financed by EU's operational programme Transport, with a budget which currently amounts to 185.2 million euro. An application to qualify for additional financial resources for the scheme has been approved by the administration and it has been subsequently processed by the European Commission through the ministry of finance.

At the seminar in Vidin, another project was discussed - the future  rehabilitation and modernisation of the rail tracks between Sofia and Vidin, which is to be financed under the same programme, with the project valued at  an estimated 320 million euro. The deputy director of strategic planning and investment policy at state-owned National Company Railway Infrastructure (NCRI), Radoslav Ivanov, presented the basic details of the plan.

After the modernisation of the section between Sofia and Vidin is completed, the trip will last a little less than three hours. Currently it takes five hours and 10 minutes.  Trains will be able to travel with an average speed of 160 km/h while at the moment they hardly exceed 70km/h.

After a thorough study of the plans, the general consensus is that there are three possible routes where the section of railways will be modernised. A technical, socio-economic and financial analysis has indicated that thus far the most optimal route for the railway track would be Vidin - Metkovets - Montana - Mezdra - Botevgrad - Sofia.

The project is estimated to cost 2.92 billion euro and the modernisation will start in 2010. NCRI will invest funds from operational programme Transport to build the section from Vidin to Metkovets over the period  2010/15, at a cost of about 652.20 million euro.