Nis residents protest third night over rail route

Residents of Pantelej, a municipality in the southern Serbian city of Nis, went out onto their own streets three evenings in a row to demand a change to the high-speed rail route that would, as currently planned, cut through a built-up part of the neighbourhood. The first gathering was held on Thursday at 7 p.m. on Somborski Boulevard, the second on Friday at 6 p.m. in Humska Street, and on Saturday at 6 p.m. people returned to Somborski Boulevard, at the third roundabout.

What sets these three evenings apart from earlier ones is that a European bank responded to the residents’ appeals. A meeting with its representatives has been scheduled for Tuesday, and organisers say it is the only institution that has come back to them since they sent their demands to several addresses. With that, the rail route through Pantelej stops being a strictly local dispute and becomes a conversation with a lender that stands behind infrastructure projects in the region.

What are the residents actually asking for?

The demands repeated at every gathering are specific, and none of them amounts to scrapping the railway:

• access to the feasibility study and to the safety assessment for freight trains passing through a residential area
• a new public presentation of the project, since most residents say they never saw the first one
• a meeting in Nis with the director of Serbian Railways Infrastructure
• moving freight traffic onto the bypass, the solution the residents propose themselves

The first item is the heart of the case. Residents are not asking to see a drawing of the route, they are asking for the document that answers what happens when a loaded freight train passes ten metres from a building entrance. According to the organisers, Serbian Railways Infrastructure has not yet replied to the request for a new presentation.

From one track to a fourth

Until 2021, a single track ran through that part of Pantelej. The plan adds two more, and a fourth has since appeared in the documentation. The difference between one track and four is not a number on paper: it is the width of the corridor that has to be cleared and the number of trains that pass beside apartment windows every day.

Organisers also say that excavation and drilling have been noticed near the planned route in recent weeks, without anyone explaining to them what those works are meant to establish. That is a large part of why a Thursday conversation with neighbours had turned into a boulevard blockade by Saturday.

A petition, and neighbours hearing about it for the first time

Signatures are being collected for a petition against the current urban plan. The organisers cite one figure that says more about the project than any statement could: a large number of residents learned only while signing that a railway is supposed to run close to their buildings.

One of the organisers is Marija Mitrovic, who lives in Pantelej. She explained that the gatherings were designed to be seen and heard, so that passers-by would ask what was going on and find out about the project that way. Mica Jevtic, head of the “Dr Dragan Milic” councillors’ group in the Assembly of the Pantelej Municipality, attended the protest and said people deserve to hear what is being prepared in their neighbourhood, and that the gatherings are organised so neighbours can see that a change of plan is not impossible.

What happens after Tuesday

In late July we reported that resistance to the high-speed rail route in Nis had spread to two city municipalities. In a week the story has moved on: the first party to answer the residents is not the city and not the investor, but a foreign lender.

That makes Tuesday’s meeting more than a formality. If bank representatives hear from residents that the public presentation was never held the way regulations require, the procedural question lands back on the table before any construction begins. Until then, the only document the people of Pantelej hold is the petition they are signing themselves.