Traffic paralysed on North Bridge due to accident

A traffic accident in Kyiv paralysed traffic on the North Bridge. This was reported by the police press service on 16 September.

The accident caused a huge traffic jam on the bridge. Drivers are asked to plan their routes in advance and choose detours.

Law enforcement officials will provide details of the incident later.

Northern Bridge in Kyiv

The Northern Bridge in Kyiv across the Dnipro River connects the right-bank residential areas with large residential areas such as Raiduzhny, Voskresenka, and Troieshchyna. Its length is 816 metres, and the bridge across Desenka is 732 metres long.

A single-pylon cable-stayed system spans the navigable part of the Northern Bridge. It is located near the left bank; the right bank part of the bridge is an overpass with 63-metre spans.

Until 2005, motor vehicles travelled in three lanes in each direction. A reversible lane was added by municipal services in August of the same year, which led to a significant increase in accidents on the bridge. In order to reduce the number of accidents and casualties, the reversible lane was replaced with a guardrail on 24 December 2007. At the same time, the number of lanes was increased to four in each direction due to their reduced width.

The Northern Bridge remains the most accident-prone section of Kyiv. Accidents are usually recorded during the morning or evening rush hour, leading to traffic gridlock in the Ukrainian capital.

Due to accidents on the North Bridge, traffic jams can stretch from it along Stepan Bandera Avenue, Olena Teliga Street, Vadym Hetman Street, Chokolivsky Boulevard to Sevastopol Square and further into the centre of the metropolis. The length of such a traffic jam can reach over 15 km.

Residents of the capital explain such high accident and mortality rates in different ways.

Sometimes it is related to the road surface itself, as some Kyiv residents say, when trucks drive onto the bridge at high speed from one end, and at the other end, a car can be thrown several metres away. They also claim that where the Northern Bridge in Kyiv crosses to the Left Bank, there used to be an old cemetery where the residents of Vygurivshchyna were buried.

We would like to remind you that Ukrzaliznytsia carried out significant work in the Kyiv region to eliminate the consequences of the emergency. The Vasylkiv-1 — Boyarka section was restored for train traffic in the shortest possible time.