Backi Breg Gets Third Truck Crossing, Open 24 Hours
Hungary's government approved expanding the Hercegszanto and Backi Breg crossing into a third truck route to Serbia, with 24 hour operation and parking for more than 40 trucks.
Between 30,000 and 40,000 vehicles pass through the Horgos crossing every day, and at peak hours the lines there stretch for several kilometers. That pressure is the main reason Hungary’s government approved expanding the Hercegszanto and Backi Breg crossing, which is set to become a third route for freight traffic between Serbia and Hungary.
Until now, the Backi Breg crossing was reserved for passenger cars and trucks under 3.5 tons only. After the expansion, the border will operate 24 hours a day and let through freight vehicles of all weights, including the heaviest trucks. In practice, that means traffic currently forced to queue at Horgos or other existing routes will be able to shift to Backi Breg once the works are finished.
What the expansion actually includes
The project calls for dedicated lanes for freight and buses, speeding up the border procedures that slow traffic today. It also expands capacity for passenger vehicles, while the new parking area will hold between 40 and 42 trucks at once. A separate path for pedestrians and cyclists only, kept apart from the roadway used by motor vehicles, is also being built.
The new route links Vojvodina directly to southern Hungary and the M6 highway, via a new bridge over the Danube near Mohacs. That bridge gives the Backi Breg crossing a connection to the Hungarian highway network it never had before, cutting the trip to central Hungary short compared with the detour through Horgos.
On the Serbian side of the border, a fast road known as Vojvodina’s Smile is being built in parallel. Its first section links Backi Breg and Sombor over 22.8 kilometers, with a completion deadline of around two years. The public tender for the construction work on that section opens in the coming weeks, which finally gives the Serbian side a concrete deadline for its part of the job.
Why Hungary is cutting costs on the access road
Hungary’s government decided to change its original plan for the access road running from route 51 to Mohacs. Instead of a four lane profile (2x2), the road will have two lanes (2x1). Minister Vitezy explained that current traffic forecasts don’t justify the pricier option: Serbia is not a member of the European Union or the Schengen area, so the border checks themselves cap the maximum flow of vehicles regardless of how wide the road is. The money saved, he said, will go straight into rebuilding the crossing itself and repairing the surrounding road network.
That calculation shows how the Hungarian side is approaching the project: it isn’t building the most expensive version of the infrastructure, but putting the money where the actual bottleneck sits, which is the crossing itself, not an access road that can’t run at full capacity anyway while Serbia stays outside Schengen.
For businesses in Vojvodina and northern Backa, a third crossing also means another option for exporting goods to the Hungarian market and the wider Central European market, without relying on a single bottleneck like today’s Horgos. For carriers, it could shorten waiting times, though the actual effect on queue length can only be measured once the crossing starts taking freight vehicles.
Neither side of the border has officially announced a date for when the expansion will be physically finished. What’s known is that work on the Hungarian side follows the approved two lane plan for the access road, while on the Serbian side the first section of the Backi Breg to Sombor road is only just entering the public procurement stage, with a completion deadline of around two years. Until both parts of the project are done, the Backi Breg crossing stays limited to its current setup for passenger vehicles and lighter trucks.
