VIDEO: Tens of thousands of Hungarians will get a new metro

Tens of thousands of Hungarians will be able to use a brand new metro line thanks to EU, government and local funds. The first phase will be ready by August 2026.

The new Kolozsvár metro under construction

According to iho.hu, Kolozsvár (Cluj Napoca, Romania) is to build a metro line. The first step on the road was a tender concerning a possible metro line’s development and the suburban railway system of the Transylvanian metropolis in 2018. The city council accepted the paper in 2020 and calculated costs worth EUR 2 billion in end-2021. That is more than HUF 750 billion.

The European Union’s recovery and resilience fund (RRF), the Romanian government and the local government signed the relevant financial contract in December 2022. According to a Romanian deputy prime minister, Sorin Mihai Grindeanu, the construction project will be the greatest in the last 30 years. The contractor is a consortium of the Turkish Gülermak, Alstom and Arcada.

They plan to build 19 stations, while the line will be 21.03 km long. The project’s first phase will concern a 7.5 km segment connecting the Monostor (Mănăștur) district with the VIVO! Cluj-Napoca mall, the Györgyfalvi district (Gheorgheni), the Szopori district (Sopor) and will reach the Europa Unită (European Union) station. This segment contains 10 stations. The rail track has to be finished until August 2026.

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Majority of the new metro’s cost covered by the EU

The metro will cross Cluj Napoca in a West-East direction and will remain under the surface on the entire line.