Summary. A summary of the expert article from the society's 35th anniversary volume. The full article is available to download below.
The A1 motorway Šentilj, Pesnica, Slivnica is a corridor of over 17 kilometres in north-eastern Slovenia, connecting the Šentilj international border crossing with Slivnica and Maribor. The project's roots reach back to 1969, when the law on motorway construction provided the basis for planning the link, and the direction represented the European trunk roads E 57 and E 59. Until the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Šentilj border crossing was the busiest in the country.
Construction proceeded in several stages, from the first works at the border in the late 1970s to completion in 2009. The border crossing and the section to Pesnica, running through the demanding terrain of the Kresnica valley, were built first and opened in 1996. After independence the alignment moved closer to Maribor and, between Pesnica and Hoče, functions as the city's eastern bypass, with construction running from south to north.
The most demanding was the northern Zrkovska, Pesnica section, also nicknamed the little Trojane, which crosses the Drava with a 765-metre bridge and burrows into the Slovenske gorice hills with the Vodole tunnel and a series of viaducts. The designs were prepared by Maribor companies, among them BPI d.o.o., while the society of road and transport engineers followed the construction.
