Belgrade railway junction
The central part of the scheme is formed by the Belgrade Centre railway station, better known as Prokop after the neighborhood it is located in, which is served via three tunnels beneath the city center.
Construction of the Belgrade railway junction was mostly completed with the opening of the Vukov spomenik underground passenger station in 1995.
During World War II, German occupational administration developed a project of Belgrade railway junction, which never materialized.
They connect the central railway station at Prokop with the main rail links to the west, north and south of the city.
The suburban traffic within the complex runs in three directions with an underground station at Vukov Spomenik in downtown Belgrade.
Within the scheme the Belgrade railway junction is serving seven main international rail routes with a considerable capacity.
Part of the junction are 15 passenger stations, a new marshalling yard serving the international transport Makiš with centralized and automatic management and traffic control and a daily capacity of 600 railway cars.
The Prokop is still not finished, has no station building and a proper access road and public transportation connections with the rest of the city.
It was announced that after the Main station is closed, these trains will use the much wider bypass route, Pančevo-Orlovat-Novi Sad railway, which is itself under reconstruction in January 2018.
As a permanent solution, a track Beli Potok-Vinča-Pančevo will be built, but the project includes the road beltway along the same route and a road-railway bridge across the Danube.
The section is 34.5 km (21.4 mi) long and the works include leveling of all crossings, uniformization of platforms, renovation of all station along the route, underground passages, formation of the green areas, etc.
Renovation of the bypass track for the freight transport to Novi Sad, almost twice longer that the regular one (102.5 km (63.7 mi), via Pančevo, Orlovat and Titel), was completed by January 2019.
As the passenger transportation was disrupted, the freight one was redirected right through the middle of the Belgrade junction, through the "Vračar" tunnel below downtown.
The CIP Institute originally drafted a plan which would make the Belgrade-Novi Sad railway operational during the entire period of high speed rail construction, but the state government buckled under the pressure from the Chinese investors and Russian contractors and closed it completely.
Deputy mayor Goran Vesić stated that hazardous materials "were transported previously through the tunnels and it will continue in the future", saying that whoever says differently is lying.
[18] The move met with the opposition from the experts and public, especially the notion that it has been hastily done because of the highly problematic and controversial Belgrade Waterfront project.
As a result, commuters need almost 20 minutes to leave the station upon their arrival and have to travel for 3 to 4 km (1.9 to 2.5 mi) to downtown to reach other public transportation routes as Prokop itself is not interconnected.
[28] As nothing of the planned infrastructure hasn't been built – urbanization and development of the neighborhood, numerous commercial objects, hotels, excellent commuting connections, two metro lines, taxi station – Vučić maintains that the isolation of the location will directly bring to the further decrease in the number of railway passengers.
[29] In June 2018 minister Mihajlović dismissed the criticism saying that the project is "attacked by those whose only contact with the railway is that they played with the toy trains as children".
Some of the missing infrastructure which they named, and which are considered megalomaniacal to begin with by the critics, include three additional railway stations (new or expanded: New Belgrade, Zemun, South), two additional bus stations (South, East) and lengthening and widening of the Deligradska Street from its current end at the highway, including the demolition of the urbanized hill of Maleško Brdo, east of Prokop.
The works, some of which were short and some long termed, including the level crossing in Resnik and previously started complete reconstruction of the Belgrade-Stara Pazova railroad.
With previous recent changes, this completely disrupted the organization within the Belgrade railway junction in August 2018 and caused numerous further complications for the passengers.
[32][33] Trains from central Serbia and Bar went only to Lazarevac, 62 km (39 mi) from Belgrade, where the passengers were taken over by the buses and transported to the city.
[34] Projected in 2008, and in 2015 announced for 2016, construction of the massive intermodal freight terminal ("dry port") in Batajnica began on 13 November 2020.
[35][36] The joint Serbian-Russian scientific and technological council was formed to develop and advance Belgrade's railway system and the tracks grid.
[43] In August 2023, president Vučić announced construction of the 18 km (11 mi) long railway from Prokop to the Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport by 2026.
