site.btaUPDATED Trucks Pile Up for 27 Km at Kapitan Andreevo Border Crossing

The line of outbound freight vehicles at the Kapitan Andreevo border crossing, on the Bulgarian-Turkish border, is approximately 27 kilometers long, Yani Peychev, head of the Kapitan Andreevo border crossing said. The line of vehicles waiting to enter the country is nearly 50 kilometers long, he added. Wait times are between six and eight hours.

According to Peychev, all waiting trucks are in the emergency lane, so traffic on the Maritsa Motorway is not obstructed. Arrangements have been put in place and operations are running at full capacity, Peychev added, specifying that the volume of processed freight vehicles does not affect the quality of the inspections. There is also round-the-clock contact with the neighboring Kapıkule border crossing and the Trilateral Center at their checkpoint.

Pechev said that heavy traffic is typical every year ahead of the Christmas and New Year holidays and expects the current situation to change by the end of next week.

Over the past 24 hours, 3,100 freight vehicles have been processed in both directions at Kapitan Andreevo. On Sunday, between 8 am and 3 pm, 630 freight trucks exited the country and 530 entered it, said Veselka Simeonova, a state inspector at the Customs Agency. She added that the causes of the congestion also include the strike by Greek farmers and carriers’ efforts to seek alternative routes.

Simeonova recalled that the expansion of the border checkpoint is underway, aiming to increase the current capacity from 2,700 to 3,400 trucks per day.

Traffic is extremely heavy for freight vehicles exiting the country at the border crossings with Turkiye, Kapitan Andreevo and Lesovo, the General Directorate Border Police said this morning.