Wheels and wolves

If the Slovak economy is doing comparatively so well - with an enviable growth rate of about 3% in recent years - it is mainly thanks to the automotive sector, which has developed massively there since the country joined the European Union sixteen years ago.

Car manufacturers from all over the world - Peugeot-Citroën, Volkswagen, Audi, Kia, Jaguar-Land Rover, Porsche - have set up factories in Slovakia. As a result, 1.1 million new cars are produced in the country each year, which is huge for a country with a population of 5.5 million. It is actually a world record. 

To continue playing the automobile card, Slovakia is of course relying on its skilled workforce and lower salaries. It is also seeking to develop its road network to reduce transport costs and make the most of the single market. After all, 90% of its cars are sold within the European Union.

The D3 motorway is a strategic link in the Trans-European Transport network indeed. It connects the city of Žilina - the base of South Korean car manufacturer Kia - with the borders of two key partners, Poland and the Czech Republic.

The Slovak Transport Ministry contacted JASPERS back in 2007 to ensure that each component of its motorway project would be fully compatible with EU criteria, thus increasing its chances of receiving Structural Fund subsidies dedicated to cohesion in the European Union.

Building a motorway is always a wager for the next 30 to 40 years. How do you assess the needs of an economy and predict transport demand for a number of decades? In this case, there were more layers to the challenge. In this mountainous region, how do you fit a new motorway in a narrow urbanised valley? How do you make sure that everyone affected by the project has a fair say and contribute to the final solution? What drainage system do you design to adapt to the changing climate and the more and more extreme rains? What will road safety mean when new technologies have completely transformed the way we drive and how can we accommodate for them now? After all, autonomous vehicles could be driving on European roads by 2034 already! Yes, planning a road today is virtually in the realms of science fiction.

The constraints are very real though. Public debt must be contained for the sake of domestic and European taxpayers and future generations, whilst climate emergency requires environmental disturbances to be limited and mitigated as much as possible.

The D3 motorway passes through the natural habitat of around 200 Slovakian grey wolves, a protected species. Exercising the utmost respect for wildlife now forms an integral part of infrastructure projects. Wolves’ lifestyle and reproduction patterns now influence the infrastructure as much as traffic projections. Designing a motorway supported by European subsidies today, means reconciling many apparently conflicting elements in a real tightrope act.

JASPERS experts have worked with the Slovak National Motorway Company on five different sections of the D3 motorway, to design these 65 km of asphalt. They accompanied every step of the way, from the National Transport Plan to the official applications for funding from the European Commission. In the field, their work changed mainly three things:

• First, road safety. The JASPERS experts worked closely with the police and the Transport Ministry on resolving a dangerous exit from one of the completed D3 motorway sections. Misleading signposting just outside the city of Žilina frequently caused drivers to go astray. To avoid driving a 25 km detour, some would turn round and go back within the Považský Chlmec tunnel, causing a number of serious accidents. Installing clearer signposts, as an emergency measure, in the autumn of 2019, has already dramatically reduced the number of accidents there.
  
  This is contributing to Slovakia's improvement in road safety in recent years. With 46 people killed on the roads annually per million inhabitants, it remains behind Denmark, Sweden and Ireland (31 fatalities per million inhabitants/year) but along with Cyprus and Slovenia, it is the country that reduced the number of fatal road accidents the most between 2017 and 2018 (-13% for Slovenia, -8% for Cyprus and Slovakia).

• Then, the initial configuration of the motorway. The D3 may eventually become a 2x2 motorway for its entire distance. However, the JASPERS experts suggested building one single-lane section  on a low-demand section in the mountains, near the Polish border. According to projections, which JASPERS helped to adjust, traffic is expected to get heavier once a major arterial road is completed on the Polish side. Only then could a widening become necessary, including costly bridges and tunnels. The staged development is currently enabling substantial budgetary savings to be made and expenses to be staggered over time.

• Lastly, the protection of wolves. Intensive discussions with the European Commission and a number of non-governmental organisations led to the route being amended to protect the natural pace of life of wolves in Slovakia as much as possible.
  
  Their thick grey-white fur means that they are comfortable even in temperatures of -40°. Wolves have remarkable endurance and, on average, they trot 60 km every night. They live in a pack with, at its core, a breeding pair who bonds for a lifetime. Each pack has a territory of at least 35 km². The size of territory depends of course on their prey. When young males leave a pack to create a new one, they must also leave behind their former territory to look for a mate. So, if a motorway interrupts these migration corridors, it is the very survival of the region’s 200 wolves that is at stake.
  
  The route of the D3 motorway was therefore designed to protect these corridors as much as possible while a wildlife bridge above the national road to the Czech Republic was added next to a D3 interchange, to ensure that the wolves can still cross both their habitat and national borders.

At the dawn of this new decade, the section of the D3 motorway exiting the city of Žilina has been substantially completed. The remainder 22 km of the route are expected to be finished within the next 5 to 6 years, section by section. So far, all submitted applications for EU subsidies (ESIF and CEF) have been approved by the European Commission, totalling EUR 685 million mainly from the Cohesion Fund as well as the Connecting Europe Facility.

Slovakia is now one of the most dynamic economies in the European Union and with its dogged determination to try and develop sustainable and climate resilient transport, it is aiming to stay ahead of the pack.