Rail Baltica, the high-speed rail project that will connect Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia with Western Europe, represents a major step toward modernizing transportation infrastructure in the three Baltic countries. Planners now anticipate the project will be finished around 2022, at a cost of 4 to 5 billion Euros. The first tranche request, jointly made in early March by the three countries to the European Union, is for 540 million Euros.
Those in the region applaud the effort, which was delayed for at least five years because of the global financial crisis.
In terms of both passenger and cargo traffic, “it’s quite a significant project, quite a necessary effort,” says Martynas Kersys, general manager of Gefco Baltic, a subsidiary of the European logistics provider, Gefco Group.
The double-tracked rail, with elevated crossings, will traverse some 700 kilometers to the Polish border. The rail will be European standard gauge of 1,435mm. Currently, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are saddled with the Soviet 1,520mm gauge. This requires a shift in wheels and engines for travel to Western Europe, both slowing the process and making freight carry more cumbersome and less competitive.
The Baltic nations’ rail system is not only a Soviet legacy, but reflects past orientation. “The whole infrastructure of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia is part of the Soviet setup,” says Peter Hostrup Rasmussen, vice president railways and metro, with the Danish consulting group COWI.
Ports in the Baltic countries have traditionally served as transit centers for goods moving to and from Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union. They remain relatively small. In terms of container throughput, the largest, Klaipeda, in Lithuania, is only one-third the size of Gdansk. St. Petersburg, the largest Baltic Sea port is six times as big.
The road system is also in need of major improvement. In the past, major roads linked the Baltics with St. Petersburg and Moscow, not with European countries to the south. Rail Baltica was first proposed in 2001, with project planning due to be completed by 2008. Funding looked set until the 2008 crisis hit, throwing this and other projects into a state of limbo. “All efforts in infrastructure were simply stopped,” says Hostrup.
While the EU supplies 80% of funding of such projects, the countries themselves must provide the remaining 20%. That’s proven too much for the cash-strapped countries.
“It will take a long time to catch up,” says Hostrup.
In the boom days before the crisis, Rail Baltica plans included a tunnel linking Helsinki with Tallinn under the Gulf of Finland. “Maybe it will happen in the very distant future,” says Kersys. “Right now, it’s very far from reality.”
