July 15, 2013
The final section of the Trakia motorway in the Republic of Bulgaria was opened to traffic. Trakia (pronounced TRAH-kee-yah) is the Bulgarian version of “Thrace,” a historical region in southeastern Europe that encompassed part of what is now Bulgaria.
The Trakia motorway, which is officially designated A1, has a total length of 220 miles (360 kilometers). This route serves as a major link between Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital and largest city, in the western area of the country; and the city of Burgas on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast in the country’s eastern region.
Construction on the Trakia motorway began in 1973, when Bulgaria was still a socialist state within the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc. (Bulgaria transitioned into a democracy after the ruling Communist Party gave up its grip on power in one of the key results of the revolutions that swept across much of the Eastern Bloc in Europe in 1989.) The last remaining portion of the motorway to be completed was a 21.4-mile (34.4-kilometer) segment between one of the interchanges at the city of Yambol and the interchange for the town of Karnobat in southeastern Bulgaria.
Numerous people eager to drive their automobiles on this segment turned out for its debut. The public officials who formally opened the section were Rosen Asenov Plevneliev (born in 1964), president of Bulgaria between 2012 and 2017; and Desislava Terzieva (born in 1965), who had become the country’s minister of regional development and public works about a month-and-a-half before that inaugural event and served in the position until August of the following year.
Photo Credit: Public Domain
For more information on highways in Bulgaria, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highways_in_Bulgaria
Transportation History 
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