Bosnia & Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the poorest countries in the region. As road transport accounts for over 95 percent of all goods and passenger movements, efficient and low cost road transport is essential to facilitating local, regional and even international commerce. In an ethnically divided country like Bosnia and Herzegovina, road development is also an important integration factor.

The overall objective of the Country Assistance Strategy for Bosnia and Herzegovina (CAS) is to increase economic opportunity and improve the quality of life of all country's citizens with poverty reduction as an overreaching theme.

Emergency Program of Assistance. Following the end of hostilities in 1995, emergency transport reconstruction activities were implemented through the Emergency Transport Reconstruction Project (ETRP) and its successor, the Second Emergency Transport Reconstruction Project (SETRP). From 1996 to 2000 under the two projects, a total of US$158.4 million in assistance from the European Union, the United States, Japan, EBRD, and IDA was made available for improvements in roads and bridges.

Most of the emergency needs defined in 1995 have been met:

• A significant part of the main and regional road networks has been rehabilitated, based on the needs identified in 1995, with 60 bridges located on the main and regional road networks repaired and/or rehabilitated and road maintenance carried out on 1,600 km of the main network and 750 km of the regional network.
• The Sarajevo, Mostar and Banja Luka airports are now operating to civilian standards.
• Trains can run on most of the network, although at minimum safety and technical standards.
• Public transportation has resumed country-wide, the tram system in Sarajevo is in operation, and 300 buses and mini-buses have been procured, meeting about 70 percent of the needs identified in 1995.

Roads. The road network of Bosnia and Herzegovina consists of approximately 22,600 km, with 3,788 km of main roads (of which about 96 percent is paved), 4,842 km of regional roads and 14,000 km of local roads. Of these, 2,024 km of main and 2,724 km of regional roads are in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and 1,764 km of main and 2,384 km of regional roads are in Republika Srpska.

Despite the emergency program, a significant part of the main road network is still in poor condition, mainly because of (a) the maintenance backlog accumulated before and during the hostilities; (b) insufficient allocations to road maintenance and rehabilitation, especially in the Federation; (c) non-observance of axle-load limits; and (d) increase in traffic volume, whereby since 1987, traffic increased between 2 and 3 times on road sections located around the country's main cities, which corresponds to an average annual increase of about 7 percent.

Traffic counts performed in 2000 showed that traffic was about 10,500 annual average daily traffic (AADT) on the Sarajevo-Tuzla road near Tuzla, 17,000 AADT on the Sarajevo-Mostar road near Sarajevo, and 15,400 AADT on the Banja Luka-Gradiska road near Banja Luka. Damage includes deep rutting (on some sections, over 70 mm), wide-spread cracks, potholes and generally increasing roughness due to a high density of patchwork and in some cases to structural fatigue.

Railways. The BiH railway network, with a total of 1,031 km, is connected with the port Ploce and the river ports Samac and Brcko. Main corridors Corridor 5c and Parallel 10 provide transport linkages to Mediterranean Europe, South East Europe, Croatia, and Yugoslav economies. Before the war, the railway driven transport system was functioning well. However, after the war, it deteriorated considerably. Railway tracks and buildings were destroyed or damaged, and significant improvements have been achieved through ETRP. While in 1990 railway freight transport in BiH had 34.2% share, in 2000 it was only 3.7%. The ratio has even worsened with regard to passenger transport. In 2000, only 0.6% of passengers were transported by railway.

Aviation. BiH has four main airports, all of which serve international air traffic. Total passenger volume for BiH in 1999 was approximately 340,000. Sarajevo served 89% of the total. Remaining airports historically served a lesser role. Banja Luka and Tuzla are former military airfields, while Mostar passengers were mainly religious pilgrims in the 1990s. However, all flows at the three smaller airports have been partially constrained due to lack of air navigation equipment and other limitations.

World Bank Ongoing Activities. The Bank is supporting development of the transport sector in BiH, which is very important for development of the economy and improvement of the population's standard of living. Two projects underway are (a) implementation of the Trade and Transport Facilitation Project, which aims at improving the performance of Customs and removing impediments to international road transport, including greatly increasing the efficiency of road border crossing points; and (b) implementation of the Road Management and Safety Project, with the objective to improve traffic flows and reduce accident rates on the country's road network through rehabilitation of priority road sections associated with identified poor road condition and accident "black spots".