Even the best-laid plans never survive the first encounter with the enemy. In the case of the Sofia metro, the enemies underground included the remains of a World War 2 fighter plane, a crack in the shallow foundations of the Central Army Club and several ruins – some with an intrinsic archaeological value and others without.

As a consequence of those setbacks, the goal of the first Sofia underground line – to link the city’s two most heavily-populated boroughs of Lyulin and Mladost – remains several months away. By the end of 2009, however, the metro station at Sofia University and the tunnels linking it to the existing Serdika station, opposite the Tzum shopping centre and Sheraton hotel, and the Yunak station at Vassil Levski national stadium, will be ready and in operation, the city hall says.

Work on the station, according to the city hall-owned firm Metropolitan and photographic evidence surfacing on internet forums, is at an advanced stage, but it would not be the first time that opening dates had to be pushed back over unforeseen delays.

The stretch in question, crossing under central Sofia, was initially due to be opened in 2007, when the metro was scheduled to be extended to the Interpred business centre in Izgrev borough. It was delayed to 2009, to coincide with the planned extension into Mladost, but more delays, which the city hall has blamed on Japanese contractors Taisei, meant that the stretch would not be ready on time. It is now due to open in autumn 2009.

The costs
Sofia’s metro is one of the slowest built in the world, considering that tunnelling work started in the late 1970s, but the latest expansion also makes it one of the least expensive, Metropolitan chief executive Stoyan Bratoev is fond of saying.

The new stretch from Yunak station to Mladost, 5.7km long and with five new stations, cost only 120 million leva. The low cost is due to the fact that 1.5km of the metro are above ground and also because it used existing tunnels, dug out in 1977/82. According to Bratoev, each new kilometre of the London underground costs about 60-80 million euro and in Athens the costs are even higher – 100 million euro for each kilometre.

For comparison, the existing metro line between Obelya borough and Serdika station, 10km-long with eight stations, cost between 340 million leva and 400 million leva, according to different estimations. The short stretch linking Serdika to Yunak, 2.3km in length, is estimated to cost more than the recently-inaugurated extension to Mladost.

The benefits
The extension into Mladost will instantaneously more than double the number of people using the Sofia metro every day from 80 000 to 190 000 people once the stretch between the Yunak and Serdika stations is operational, according to Metropolitan’s calculations. It would prevent 14 000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year and save Sofia residents 30 000 hours every day, the company estimates.

Once the second metro line begins operations in 2012, those figures would rise to 500 000 passengers every day, accounting for 40 per cent of the total traffic in the city, preventing 30 000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year and saving Sofia residents 150 000 hours daily. By that time, the total length of the Sofia metro would be 31km and it would have 27 stations.

Others will have reaped much greater benefits from owning real estate near the planned metro stations. Land along the planned route of the metro in Mladost and Goroublyane boroughs was highly sought after even before work began on the Mladost extension in 2005, with prices peaking in early 2008, real estate brokers have said. At that point, the high prices and the slowing down property market made the growth trend unsustainable.


The plans

Cases that prompted media speculation of irregularities are not uncommon, most recently in a case that saw a company awarded more than 730 000 leva for a 129 sq m plot near the Mladost station. Suspicion was further fuelled by Sofia chief architect Petar Dikov’s revelation that the company bought most of the plot for just more than 3000 leva from the Sofia city hall during Stefan Sofianski’s tenure as mayor.