PKP Cargo and Lithuania’s LG Cargo signed a letter of intent on the establishment of an intermodal rail JV which will develop the intermodal railway services between Poland and Lithuania. The letter of intent allows PKP Cargo and LG Cargo to start negotiations on the possible joint venture without any obligation at this stage.
“The cooperation between the Polish and Lithuanian railway freight operators on intermodal transport is very promising. A volume of 50 million tonnes of cargo is annually transported between Poland and Lithuania, but only about 1 percent is carried by rail. In practice, road transport companies have a monopoly on these transport services, and we want to shift transport to the railways,” Czesław Warsewicz, the president of PKP Cargo said.
The two operators have the possibility to implement EU transport and environmental policy. Annually, the Polish-Lithuanian border is crossed by more than 2.5 million lorries and reducing the volume of this traffic would contribute to reducing CO2 emissions and increasing the level of road safety. The railway emits over three times less CO2 per tonne-kilometer compared to trucks, and it is also a much safer transport mode than the road one. “We would like to gradually take over part of the freight traffic between Poland and Lithuania. Now 2.5 million trucks drive between our countries every year, which shows what social and environmental benefits our initiative can bring,” Warsewicz explains.
“Railways in Poland and Europe have a huge and unused potential in freight transport. The agreement between PKP Cargo and LG Cargo will allow this potential to be better utilized. It will be also the implementation of the “truck on track” programme, which will relieve Polish roads,” said Janusz Kowalski, the Deputy Minister of State Assets.
The cooperation between the two railway freight operators will contribute to a significant modal shift to sustainable transport and will also foster the development of the rail infrastructure in the Baltic Region. “Poland is heavily involved in the construction of Rail Baltica mainline, connecting Warsaw by rail with the Baltic States. We are pleased that the successful cooperation between Poland and Lithuania in the area of infrastructure construction is expanding to rail freight sector,” said Andrzej Bittel, the Secretary of State in the Ministry of Infrastructure.
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