Summary. A summary of the expert article from the society's 35th anniversary volume. The full article is available to download below.
The A4 Podravje motorway between Slivnica and Gruškovje became the country's third transport backbone under the National Motorway Construction Programme and part of the route linking Central Europe through Slovenia with Croatia and onward toward Thessaloniki. Before it was built, traffic, especially the growing transit, was carried by the G1-1 main road, which did not provide adequate standards or safety.
The section was divided into two parts. The first, from Slivnica to Draženci, is 19.850 km long and runs across the flat Dravsko polje plain past Maribor airport, with great attention paid to drainage because of water protection zones. It was opened to traffic in 2009. The second part, Draženci to Gruškovje, 13.02 km long, largely follows the former G1-9 main road, includes the Log tunnel and ends in the hilly Haloze region; it was opened to traffic in 2018.
The project documentation was prepared in 2006, while the Gruškovje border crossing had already been built in 2004. The membership of the Society of Road and Transport Engineers also followed the construction directly, including through a professional excursion to the Log tunnel construction site.
