Belgrade Centre railway station

The Belgrade Centre Railway Station (Serbian: Железничка станица Београд Центар, romanized: Železnička stanica Beograd Centar), colloquially known as Prokop (Serbian Cyrillic: Прокоп), is the new central railway station in Belgrade, Serbia. The station is located in the Belgrade municipality of Savski Venac. Although unfinished, it serves as de facto main railway station of the city, after replacing the old main station at the Belgrade Waterfront. The unsuccessful, decades-long attempted construction of the new central railway station of Belgrade was hampered by a lack of funding to finish the adjoining 14 km of tunnels, several railway bridges including the New Railroad Bridge across the Sava river, a new road network connecting to the city and technical installations. Construction of the new station faced countless setbacks over a period of several decades. The entire construction process has been described as infamous, with deadlines being missed one after another. Belgrade Centre station was opened on 26 January 2016, serving two daily trains to Novi Sad, as well as BG Voz, Belgrade's commuter railways. Following gradual re-routing, it gained its current role on 1 July 2018. Today, the station links Belgrade to Vršac, Sremska Mitrovica, Šid, Valjevo, Požega, Užice, Niš, the Montenegrin cities of Podgorica and Bar, as well as Novi Sad via a high-speed intercity route and other cities. It is also served by the primary variations of BG Voz's lines 1 and 3. However, the station is poorly connected to the rest of the city, being reached by just four city lines. They include line 36 (GSP Belgrade) to Savski Trg and Slavija, as well as bus route 600 (GSP Belgrade) to the Belgrade Bus Station in New Belgrade and the Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport. Three more lines - trolleybuses 40 and 41, as well bus 44 - stop near the station, but all require walking.

The ill-fated construction of the new railway station, which was supposed to replace the Belgrade Main railway station in Savamala, was to last for decades. Originally, in the late 1960s, it was supposed to be constructed near the present interchange of Autokomanda, but the idea was suddenly dropped, and one of the major architectural authorities at the time, Branko Žeželj, picked Prokop instead, which ultimately left the Autokomanda interchange unfinished — the exit in the Niš direction was only finished in 2007. The idea was presented publicly in February 1970. It also included the removal of all tracks from the Savamala (Sava Amphitheatre) and of the now Former Belgrade Main railway station, while the location along the river was to be turned into vast green spaces. The city council adopted the decision to build the new station in March 1971. The Council for Urbanism drafted the projected construction of the new railway station later that year. The project was monumental and expensive, without precedent in Yugoslavia. It was envisioned to be "large enough for the entire 21st century" with 10,000 commuters passing through it per hour. Because of that, including the seemingly unrealistic deadline of only 18 months, the council session after which the plan was greenlighted was very turbulent and lasted for 7.5 hours. In 1974 the design project was finished, preparatory works officially started on 3 December 1976, and full construction began on 8 October 1977. The station building was planned to have a bird-shaped roof, with 8 platforms and 11 tracks. The deadline for completion was 1 May 1979, but the rapidly deteriorating economic situation in Yugoslavia at the time slowed construction and the project was halted in 1980. In May 1984, the notion of abandoning the project altogether, due to its high cost, was officially considered for the first time. Construction resumed in 1990 and ove

TrainStation data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).