"This is a confirmation of how necessary the Pelješac Bridge was for us"

Interior Minister Davor Božinović stated that two days after the opening of the Pelješac Bridge for traffic, in the height of the tourist season, the number of passengers at the Klek border crossing was 42 percent lower than last week.

“This is a confirmation of how necessary the construction of the bridge was for us, not only for our people, but also for foreign tourists in Croatia," Davor Božinović wrote on Twitter.

On Wednesday, the head of the Croatian Roads Traffic Department, Slaviša Babić, said that this and next week will be busy for the bridge.

The Pelješac Bridge, one of the largest projects in the EU and the largest in Croatia financed by the European Union, was officially opened on Tuesday evening, and regular traffic in both directions across the bridge that connects the south of Croatia with the rest of the country started at midnight. The bridge crosses a sea strait with a width of 2140 meters and a length of 2404 meters, with a navigational profile under the bridge of 200 x 55 meters. Economically, it is extremely important for the entire country, primarily Dubrovnik-Neretva County, and its opening ended the territorial discontinuity created more than 300 years ago when the then Republic of Dubrovnik ceded part of the coast to the Ottoman Empire.

Source: HRT