The EU plan to fund high speed train railway connections in the Baltics is taking form. Construction of the Rail Baltic railway route in Poland and Lithuania is slowly progressing. Lithuania plans to finish its railway line to Latvia’s borders until 2015. Poland plans to modernize its line to Lithuania by 2020, Lithuanian Television reports.
“Speaking of Rail Baltic, which will connect Poland and Lithuania, we should admit – we have been lazy. Our government has great hopes for the new EU budget,” – notes journalist Jakub Kurasz of Rzeczpospolita. “We often write about this project. This greatly pressures the government. It should be said that Poland does not have a good railway infrastructure”.
The work to modernize the 60 km railway route from Warsaw to Sadovny will be finished within two years. 85% of the financing of this project comes from the European Union. In total, Poland is expected to modernize nearly 350 km of railway lines, so that trains would be able to travel at 160-200 km/h.
“Rail Baltic modernization requires enormous funding. There are 120 km of railway lines that need to be modernized from Sadovny to Bolostok; a new line needs to be constructed from Elka to Suwalki. This means at least several billion Zloty. We plan to have the route from Trakiszki to Sestokai to be modernized only in 2020,” – noted the Deputy Transport Affairs Minister of Poland Andrzej Massel.
Lithuania’s Rail Baltic route will be 335 km long. The first line, Mockava and Sestokai, will cost nearly 4.5 million LVL. According to the government’s plan, the railway line to Kaunas will be finished before the end of 2013.