Foca: Tuhalji Bridge Open for Trucks by November 6
Minister Zoran Stevanovic and Foca Mayor Milan Vukadinovic set a deadline for trucks to cross the Tuhalji bridge, shut since February by a landslide on the Foca-Sarajevo road.
Republika Srpska’s transport minister Zoran Stevanovic and Foca mayor Milan Vukadinovic agreed on September 22 that the Tuhalji bridge, on the main Foca to Sarajevo road, will be cleared for freight trucks by November 6 at the latest, or that a temporary bypass will be built alongside it if that deadline cannot be met. Carriers, who have waited months for heavy trucks to cross the bridge again, also attended the meeting. The route links Republika Srpska with Sarajevo and regularly carries freight traffic from across the region, including trucks coming from Serbia.
The road has been closed to freight traffic since February 5, 2026, after a landslide in Tuhalji damaged the bridge’s structure. Since then, truck drivers heading to Sarajevo have had to take a detour through Mostar, roughly 200 kilometers longer than the direct route. Drivers coming from Foca who want to avoid the unpaved forest road through Kalinovik are left with only one alternative: a far longer route through Gorazde.
Mayor Vukadinovic said after the meeting that he understands the pressure the closure puts on carriers.
“Those drivers belong to the real economy, they are people who feed their families and fill budgets, so we have to have understanding for them, as well as for the population of this region. I’m glad we agreed on final deadlines today,” said Milan Vukadinovic, mayor of Foca.
Miroslav Jankovic, acting director of JP Putevi Republike Srpske, announced that work on the temporary bypass will begin within seven to ten days if it turns out the bridge itself cannot reopen by November 6, regardless of how the repairs are progressing by then.
“If we don’t manage to finish by then, we are asking for a temporary bypass to be built right next to the bridge. We will stick to the deadlines, and we will start work on the bypass within the next seven to ten days, so we will honor what we agreed today,” said Miroslav Jankovic.
A Deadline Already Missed Once
This is not the first date Republika Srpska has announced for this stretch of road. On April 1, appearing on an RTRS program, Minister Stevanovic promised the road would be open by May 1 at the latest.
“I promised the head of Foca and the head of Kalinovik that we would meet by May 1 at the latest and cross that road,” Zoran Stevanovic said at the time.
That deadline was not met. The Istinomjer portal found in late April that construction work was still not finished and rated Minister Stevanovic’s promise as unfulfilled. According to the Auto-Moto Alliance of Republika Srpska and the Bosnia and Herzegovina Auto-Moto Club, the road was still officially marked as closed to traffic on May 4, and the Direkt portal, which visited the site in late April, also found the work unfinished.
The new agreement from Foca now sets two possible outcomes instead of one: either the bridge itself is made ready for heavy vehicles by November 6, or a temporary bypass alongside it is finished in parallel by that date. Work on that second option, according to Jankovic, starts within the next seven to ten days, so carriers should not be left waiting until November without any concrete action on the ground.
