The Road Infrastructure Agency (API) will install more than 100 electronic signs with weather stations on motorways next year and double the number of staff who monitor road conditions, API board chairman Alexander Todorov said.
The signs will hang on gantries over the carriageways and warn drivers of hazards and changes on the road. The weather stations will record temperature, wind and other readings. Todorov said the signs show different information from ordinary fixed road signs.
Signs will go up on the Trakia and Maritsa motorways and on the Botevgrad–Mezdra and Vidin–Montana sections. Some gantries are already in place. Where there are none, API will build new ones along with the signs. On existing gantries, it will add only the signs.
Todorov also showed a map. Red dots mark the project for signs on the Trakia motorway, which was cancelled in 2022. Blue dots mark finished gantries with no signs, and green dots mark worn-out structures on the Struma motorway.
A new system is already running. It collects data on crashes, repairs, restrictions and incidents in one place, checks it and passes it to navigation platforms. The data is sent in a format that these and other platforms can use, and how drivers see it depends on the app. The data comes from reports to 112, the API hotline and the links with other institutions.
Todorov said the new platform gets checked information to people faster, and the aim is to warn as many people as possible.
The question of how API, the toll authority and the interior ministry work together arose after a serious crash on the Trakia motorway. Afterwards, the three bodies were given seven days to link their systems urgently. Until then, drivers rely on API data shown through navigation platforms and other systems that use it.
The system will also show detour routes, and the time between a report, a check and publication is to be cut. API will have twice as many staff because, Todorov said, digitalisation will bring more and more information to process and monitor.
The money for the gantries and signs is already in the budgets. API wants preparations finished early in the year. It will then announce a public tender, pick a contractor and start building.