With the mayor of the Municipality of Šmartno ob Paki, Janko Kopušar, we have signed a Letter of Intent. The Municipality of Šmartno ob Paki has thus joined, as the first municipality from the Savinja region, the Mobilitatis Omni grouping. Šmartno ob Paki will soon acquire a completely new railway stop on the Celje–Velenje line. For this railway line between Celje and Velenje, we propose an upgrade within the Mobilitatis Omni as part of the corridor, which we have named the Paka–Savinja–Sotla.
Šmartno ob Paki is one of the 31 municipalities in the Savinja statistical region. According to data from 2022, the municipality has 3,340 residents. It is located along the Celje–Velenje railway line, which is a single-track, non-electrified line with numerous unsecured crossings. In the seventies of the last century, in the former country, a section of this line between Velenje and Dravograd, up to Otiški Vrh, was dismantled. Today, the route of the dismantled railway line is used for the long-distance Štrekna cycling path.
In the past, Šmartno ob Paki was already an important hub for railway freight transport, as well as a bus hub. There is no reason why this should not be the case in the future as well. The proposed Paka–Savinja–Sotla corridor consists of five railway lines:
- railway line from Dravograd to Slovenj Gradec and Velenje (dismantled from Otiški Vrh to Velenje);
- line from Velenje to Celje;
- main line, from Celje to Grobelno;
- line from Grobelno to Podčetrtek in Slovenia and further to Kumrovec and Harmica in Croatia; and
- line from Stranje to Rogaška Slatina and Rogatec in Slovenia and Krapina in Croatia.
Map: Railway line from Celje to Velenje
For the corridors of the Paka–Savinja–Sotla, we propose inclusion in the second, expanded level of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN_T). We propose upgrading and electrifying the entire corridor, with the reinstatement of the missing section between Velenje and Otiški Vrh/Dravograd, of course on a new route. For railway infrastructure upgrade projects, the European Commission allocates up to 85 percent co-financing from the Cohesion Fund and the European Regional Development Fund to cohesion countries.
At the same time, it is more than reasonable, especially due to the new railway stop, to re-establish Šmartno ob Paki as a bus hub as well, so that buses and with them nationally subsidized intercity bus connections truly serve as feeders and distributors for the railways. We look forward to collaborating with the Municipality of Šmartno ob Paki and at the same time, we assure that we will do everything in our power to justify the trust shown.
Extended Core TEN_T Corridor proposal Paka–Savinja–Sotla: Dravograd–Celje/Leg Podčetrtek/–Krapina.
