Augustów ring road is already open

The total length of the ring road is 34.23 km. The fist section with the length of 21.48 km, from the Augustów node to the Raczki node, is single-lane national road No 8. The second 12.75 km-long section from the Raczki node to the Suwałki Południe node is a part of expressway No S61. The new road is 36.6 km-long, including the spur road from the Suwałki Południe to existing national road No 8.
The ring road has been routed through Raczki and does not collide with any areas protected as a part of the European Environmental Network Natura 2000.

The investment covered:

• two sections of the ring road with the total length of 34.23 km,
• ?five transport nodes: Augustów, Borki, Janówka, Raczki, Suwałki Południe and the roundabout on the junction of the spur road with national road No 8,
• 40 bridge structures, including: 8 bridges over the rivers: Kamienny Bród, Rospuda, Zalewianka, Głęboka and Szczeberka, 18 flyovers and 14 wildlife crossings,
• 36 culverts being also wildlife crossings,
• road maintenance section in the area of the Raczki node,
• approx. 80 km of internal and traverse roads crossing the ring road (commune, poviat and voivodeship roads),
• traffic safety devices, acoustic and anti-glare screens,
• two weight pre-selection systems,
• fencing of the route with the total length of 70 km.

The construction of the ring road in figures:

• 2.5 million m3 of excavations and 3.5 million m3 of fills;
• in the culminating period of earth works, from June to September 2013, at the construction site there were 150 transport trucks which,
• in addition to the internal transportation works (excavation earth), were used to deliver daily 60,000 t of the material from mines;
• for all the 40 bridge structures, the total amount of structural concrete mixed in the mobile concrete batching plant installed for the road construction purposes, with the capacity of 120 m3/hour, was 55,000 m3.
• 961 precast concrete T-beams have been installed;
• the bridge over the Rospuda river is 180 m long. Due to the natural assets of the Rospuda River Valley, construction of the crossover required application of the incremental launching method, which enabled to reduce interference with the river channel. The bridge has a steel structure consisting of the composite steel and concrete deck. Weight of only the steel structure is 840 t.

Due to the large extent of bituminous works (480 thousand tons), Budimex, for the project execution period, opened two bitumen mixing plants with the total efficiency of 420 ton/hour.

“Lafarge supplied 75,000 m3 of concrete mixes for the construction of the Augustów ring road. This is yet another of our road construction projects. The integrated proposal of our company for the infrastructure sector enables us to construct, together with our partners, stable and safe road connections between towns and cities. We greatly appreciate cooperation with Budimex, which used our concrete mixes on the Augustów ring road, mainly to build bridge structures and bridge piles. All the mixes have been produced in the Lafarge mobile concrete batching plant with the capacity of 120 m3 of concrete per hour, located close to the construction site. Our proposal, in addition to the concrete deliveries, also covered pumping of the concrete mixes and cooperation in laboratory tests,” said Janusz Miłuch, CEO of the Lafarge Concrete Line.

The commissioned Augustów ring road is a key element in the international traffic between Poland and Baltic countries. In the future it will constitute a part of planned expressway No S61 from Ostrowia Mazowiecka, through the planned Łomża ring road, Ełk to Budzisko. Its natural extension towards Lithuania will be the planned Suwałki ring road.
 “Thanks to this project, thousands of tractor-trailer units, which had been crossing everyday through Augustów for years, creating risk for the health and life of the residents, will be now directed to the ring road,” said Krzysztof Kozioł, director of the Budimex External Communication Office.

The contract for the design and construction of the Augustów ring road with the net value of PLN 535.9 million (PLN 659 million gross) was signed in March 2011. The works were completed within the deadline, in October 2014. The Augustów ring road is co-financed by the European Union under the Operational Programme Infrastructure and Environment – value of the subsidy is PLN 470.58 million.