Location: Sofia

Year: 2018

Team: Nurhan Redzheb, Silvia Chakarova, Despina Kaneva, Maria Ivanova

Client: Garitage Park

Status: Completed

Preliminary Study for Bicycle and Pedestrian Connection between Garitage Park and Business Park Sofia Metro Station

Garitage park is a major mixed-use urban development located in the southern parts of Sofia. It’s planned to provide a variety of office and residential space, sports hall, school, park with playgrounds and sport facilities and other services. Garitage park is the first mixed-use development project in Central and Eastern Europe with an Excellent Final Certificate according to the International Scheme of BREEAM Communities 2012 for social, economic and environmental sustainability. Based on this and with the vision for comfortable and safe urban environment for its future residents and guests, Garrige Park Board reached out to our team with a request to find a solution for new bicycle and pedestrian connection to the nearby metro station – Business Park Sofia.

The preliminary study proposes a development of a bicycle and pedestrian connection between Garitage park and Business Park Sofia metro station. The aim of the project is to promote sustainable forms of urban mobility on the territory of the large housing estate “Mladost 4” and to improve the access to the existing bicycle and pedestrian network around the “Okolovrasten pat” Blvd. (Ring Road).

The study covers the connection between Garitage park and Business Park Sofia metro station that includes:

• “Aleksandar Malinov” Blvd. between Business Park Sofia metro station and the bridges located over the “Okolovrasten pat” Blvd. (Ring Road)
• Eastern bridge – extension of “Aleksandar Malinov” Blvd. towards “Vitoshki kambani” St.
• Western bridge – extension of “Aleksandar Malinov” Blvd. towards “Racho Petkov Kazandzhiyata” St.

In April 2018 place.make’s team conducted a survey to give us an insight on how people use and move through the streets around Garitage park. The countings show a significant share of pedestrians on the Eastern bridge and on “Aleksandar Malinov” Blvd. between Business Park Sofia metro station and the territories south of “Okolovrasten pat” Blvd. (Ring Road). At rush hour some of the pedestrians are forced to use the traffic lane which indicates for insufficient width of the sidewalk and results in dangerous walking conditions. During the construction of the Western bridge there was no sidewalk included in the project but the urban developments south of “Okolovrasten pat” Blvd. (Ring Road) make the bridge attractive to pedestrians as it is the shortest connection to the metro station. However, it’s approx. 400 m length has poor and inconvenient conditions for pedestrians with sidewalk width less than 1 m that includes traffic barriers, concrete barriers and lighting poles. All of the sidewalks in the project area have poor pavement conditions.

In the “Mladost 4” neighbourhood were built some of the first bicycle tracks in Sofia reaching close to Business Park Sofia metro station. However, there is no bicycle lane across “Aleksandar Malinov” Blvd. and the bridges which makes the cycling between the newly developed office and residential spaces around the Ring Road challenging. At the same time, the busy traffic lanes and the sidewalks are used by cyclists which can be dangerous.

The preliminary study proposes a bicycle and pedestrian connection between Garitage park and Business Park Sofia metro station which aims to create a comfortable and safe urban environment for alternative forms of mobility. The project develops two-sided one-way bicycle lanes across the Eastern bridge, together with extension of both sidewalks by traffic lane width reduction. On “Aleksandar Malinov” Blvd. between the bridges over the Rind Road and Business Park Sofia metro station the project proposes development of two-sided one-way bicycle lanes on the Eastern and Western local roads combined with a greenery aside. The third part of the project includes the preservation of the Western bridge’s width and suggests an extension of its eastern sidewalk (from 1 m to 1.8 m) with reduction of the three traffic lanes with 0.25 m each.

The project also defines stages for implementation of the proposed measures. At the first stage it  presents the bicycle and pedestrian connection between Garitage park and Business Park Sofia metro station. The next stages includes future development of pedestrian and bicycle routes towards “Kambanite” park and the existing cycling routes in “Mladost 4” neighbourhood.

Below you may find more materials from the study: