Road infrastructure experts have raised the alarm that works on the Corridor VIII Highway are being carried out without quality and with poor designs. A source at the Albanian Road Authority said that the collapse in the village of Dragostunjë, which blocked traffic for several days, was carried out without a CBR study.
In road construction, CBR (California Bearing Ratio) is a technical indicator used to assess the strength and bearing capacity of the soil where the road will be built. Before construction begins, engineers need to understand whether the existing soil is sufficient to support the road structure.
For this reason, the CBR test is performed, which measures the soil's resistance to penetration and expresses the result in percentage. The source at ARRSH said that the works on the axes of Corridor VIII were done without CBR and all the roads built in recent years are done without this assessment. The engineer said that CBR directly affects the longevity and safety of the road.
Since the Corridor will now also serve NATO and will also be used by heavy military vehicles, the road axis requires a more in-depth assessment. For this reason, CBR is considered one of the most important geotechnical parameters, which was not carried out in Corridor VIII, the engineer said.
The corridor is being built at the expense of the environment
Infrastructure projects in Corridor VIII are facing a serious technical and environmental crisis. Aggressive and uncontrolled excavations in the Shkumbin River bed have completely degraded the bedrock of the slopes, causing changes in the natural flow of water and destabilizing the entire surrounding area.
The source at the ARRSH said that the interventions with heavy vehicles in the river's flow have damaged the ecosystem and have exposed the foundations of the mountain slopes. The river, diverted by the remains of the excavations, is now eroding the lower parts of the new and existing road.
Without the support of the river bed, the soil masses have lost their balance, the expert said. The recent collapse on the existing Elbasan - Librazhd road in the village of Dragostunjë is also a consequence of the excavation in the river. The engineer at the ARRSH said that not only this axis, but the entire slope above the area that was excavated in the river, is now a fragile area and further collapses are expected.
Experts in the field are concerned that attempting to build the road on eroded slopes is not only costly, but also dangerous to the lives of future travelers.
They said that the existing project, which is based on filling and digging slopes, already destabilized by erosion, should be canceled and this segment should be redesigned from scratch using viaducts, which are high bridges. This method, according to them, would allow the road to pass this problematic area where it is located, without further affecting the riverbed and without risking further collapse of the mountain.
"We cannot fight nature when we have injured it so badly. Every penny spent on the current retaining walls is money thrown down the drain. The project must be radically changed," said the source at the ARRSH.
Experts call for immediate intervention by environmental institutions and the Ministry of Infrastructure to stop this disaster before the damage becomes irreversible.
Major errors of the road axis of Corridor VIII
Corridor VIII has a long and recently entangled history with projects and studies that seem more like they are sabotaging the project.
When Corridor VIII was reclassified as a European Core Transport Network three years ago, the Albanian government updated the project, moving the last segment on Albanian territory, from the Bushtricë bridge in Qukës to exit near the gorge called "Skënderbeg's Ladder" on the border with North Macedonia, to a completely new route, with a length of 10 kilometers.
The new trail passes at an altitude of almost 900 meters in the Meniku Mountains towards the border with North Macedonia, making maintenance very difficult after its completion, while the other variants pass at an altitude of about 600 meters.
Professor Faruk Kaba said that the new route, in addition to being costly, unnecessarily lengthens the Corridor. The variant agreed upon with the Macedonian side, as it passes through difficult terrain from Albania, into North Macedonia, makes a rather long detour to return to Qafë-Thane.
This detour also bypasses the railway line that should accompany the road route.
Professor Kaba said that a big mistake was made in the Elbasan bypass project, which had many tunnel-free and low-cost variants, but the government has found an absurd solution with a two-kilometer tunnel, which increases costs not only during construction, but also in maintenance.
There is also a misconception that the axes should be completed first. Building segments after Elbasan, without first building the bypasses of Tirana and Elbasan, has no value. Professor Kaba is quite concerned about what is really happening in road investments./Monitor.al/
