Lithuanian Transportation Minister Eugenijus Sabutis believes that it will be realistic to install the Rail Baltica European standard-gauge railway between Lithuania and Poland by 2030, because the link will be crucial for military mobility and national security. Work on lines connecting Lithuania to Latvia and Estonia, however, will begin later.
“Our first question is whether this will be realistic for Lithuania and Poland,” Sabutis said in an interview on Ziniu Radijas radio on Thursday. “We must answer this question by looking at whether we can ensure that the section from Poland and all the way across Lithuania will be in place by 2030. It is important for Lithuania to have it at least in Lithuania by that time.”
Sabutis insisted that the project is critical for national security.
“We are particularly looking at this through the prism of national security,” the minister said. “The president and I are underscoring the fact that we must focus not just on foreign and passenger transport, but particularly on the transport of military goods via Rail Baltica. Looking at this through this lens, we see that 2030 really is a critical deadline and a target toward which we must work.”
Sabutis announced that Poland has already launched a bid for tenders for a 100-km section of Rail Baltica between Bialystok and Elk.
“If so,” the minister said, “there won’t be that much left over.”
Polish media reported on January 7 that a subsidiary of Poland’s PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe rail infrastructure company has launched a bid for tenders to select a contractor to modernise the 100-km section between the two towns. The project has an estimated price tag of around 6 billion zloty (EUR 1.32 billion), and work is due to be completed by 2029.
In Poland, the Harmony Link power interconnector will also be installed alongside the Rail Baltica route.
Eugenijus Sabutis took over as Lithuania’s transport minister last month, and he says that he hopes to discuss the further development of Rail Baltica with his Latvian and Estonian counterparts soon.
Latvian prosecutors last December launched an investigation on the possible misuse of public funds allocated to Rail Baltica.
A special parliamentary commission in Latvia found gross negligence and unapproved project changes which led the overall cost of the project to quadruple from less than EUR 6 billion to nearly EUR 24 billion.
The initial plan was for a Rail Baltica line between the capitals of Estonia, Latvia and Estonia to be open for business in 2025. Soaring costs and major delays have pushed that date back to 2030.
The three Baltic States still use Soviet-era broad-gauge rail networks.
Source: BNS
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