Lithuania’s Transport Minister hopes that European Commission will contribute to the establishment of a plan on the development of the Polish section of Rail Baltica, the European-standard gauge railway. “As far as I know, Poland does not plan to introduce high-speed trains on Rail Baltica or other priority routes and I hope that Mrs. [Catherine] Trautmann, coordinator of the North Sea-Baltic TEN-T Corridor, and the European Commission’s officials this year will provide a clearly coordinated plan how to solve this issue,” Minister Rimantas Sinkevicius said during an international discussion on the implementation of Rail Baltica project in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
The minister also said that he expected the institutions implementing the European-standard gauge railway project to strengthen their efforts.
“I call upon the partners to combine efforts to decide on plans for the development of the 1,435-mm line together with Poland. We can’t create an isolated high-speed railway network in the Baltic countries if our gate to Europe – Poland – does not plan to develop a similar network,” the minister said.
The Rail Baltica project may cost between 3.7 billion and 5.2 billion euros in total, based on various estimations. The total length of Rail Baltica is planned to be around 360 kilometers in Lithuania, slightly more than 300 kilometers in Latvia, about 300 kilometers in Estonia and 430 kilometers in Poland.
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