The revised project of the Metropolitan Road Ring, challenged by…

The elected officials of Bihoren rejected a prior complaint whose purpose was to obtain the annulment of a decision recently adopted, unanimously, for the approval of the revised project of the Metropolitan Road Ring, intended to bypass Oșorhei, Oradea, Sânmartinul and Nojorid.

This time, 13 of the 21 land owners in Cheriu, dissatisfied that the road crosses their land, contested the project and who, at the end of last year, obtained the annulment of the original project in court.

Second attempt

According to the documents submitted to the attention of the county councilors at Friday’s meeting, a total of 14 complaints for the revocation of Decision no. 68 of March 27, for the approval of the new technical-economic indicators, the general estimate, the location of the works and the expropriation corridor – all revised following a sentence of the Cluj Court of Appeal by which, in December 2023, three decisions from 2022 were annulled were the basis of the Metropolitan Road Ring project.

As Bihor he also wrote, the sentence of the Cluj court was the result of a lawsuit initiated by 21 land owners from the village of Cheriu, dissatisfied that the 17 km route of the Metropolitan Ring Road crosses land they own.

Based on the decision of the Cluj Court of Appeal, CJ Bihor was obliged to justify why he established a route that also passes through the inner city of the town, but also to modify the technical project of the new road so that it has characteristics not of a county road, but of national road, so it should be wider. The effect was that the project will be more expensive by approximately 5 million euros, and the total expropriated area on all 17 km will increase by approximately 12% compared to the initial one, as unanimously determined by the county councilors, regardless of political affiliation, through Decision 68/27 March 2024.

“A General Reference”

In Friday’s meeting, the leadership of CJ Bihor proposed and obtained the rejection of the preliminary complaint of the 14 owners who, in fact, are 13, one of the signatories contesting the revised project both as a natural person, in his personal name, and in the name of an individual enterprise on who owns it.

PNL and UDMR representatives voted to reject the complaint, with PSD councilors abstaining, although a month ago they also voted, along with the others, for the revised project of the Metropolitan Road Ring, with more expropriations and at a value bigger.

The basis of the rejection of the previous complaints was the recommendation of the CJ Bihor lawyers, who noted that “the petitioners’ complaints do not precisely indicate normative texts allegedly violated by the county authority, but make general references to the law, we are unable to respond precisely to the accusations that are brought”.

Given the rejection of the complaints, it is therefore expected that the revised project of the Metropolitan Road Ring will also be challenged in court by the owners of Cheriu.