During a meeting with Czech Transport Minister Dan Ťok, Slovenian Ministrer of Infrastructure Peter Gašperšič has presented the Koper – Divača second railway track project, and invited Czech companies to participate in the implementation of the project.
The track-doubling project is part of the infrastructure plans of the authorities, being estimated at approximately EUR 1.4 billion, and it is going to be carried out under a PPP scheme.
The purpose of doubling the Divača—Koper track is to provide an efficient rail link for freight transport form the Port of Koper and the rest of the network and in particular to remove all limitations related to the capacity of the line from Koper to Divača junction.
The Slovenian Government requested EU funding hoping to attract private investors as well. The authorities applied for funds of EUR 413 million from CEF, but in June 2015 the EU announced that the project was not approved for funding. However, the Infrastructure Minister, Peter Gašperšič, stated that the Government continued to look into options for a private partner and select PPP models.
In January 2016, the Government announced that it decided to set up a special company to manage the construction and operation of the planned line. The company would manage only the second Koper – Divača line, while the remaining infrastructure would continue to be owned by the Slovenske Železnice national company.
The project aims at the construction of 27.1 km of double track between Divača and Koper, starting from Divača to the Karst plateau to the coastal area. Because of the difficult terrain, environmental constraints and more than 400 meters of altitude difference, the so-called tunnel variant proved to be the most appropriate. Thus, 75% of the line route will be tunnels, which means that 8 tunnels with a total length of 20.5 km, 2 viaducts with a total length of 1.1 km and 2 bridges with a total length of 170 m will be built.
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