He said that the representatives of the European Commission (EC) and Estonia also emphasized at the meeting of the strategic management group of “Rail Baltica” this week that they expect the implementation strategy of the Latvian project.
“At the moment, it is clear that the setup from all security aspects is the construction of the straight corridor – Lithuania and Estonia must be connected, but the historical decisions were to start the construction of the most complex nodes in Riga – Riga Central Station and Riga Airport. Seeing the impact of the war and the Covid-19 pandemic, the costs are significant have grown. Thus, we have reached the stage where we have to find how to complete these construction projects and how to find the missing funding,” emphasized Dilevs.
Commenting on the scenario of the first stage, which is currently being evaluated and envisages the connection between Misa-Riga Airport and the existing gauge rail connection between international stations, he said that it is a normal practice to implement the functioning sections sequentially in stages.
“Knowing that there will be a funding shortfall for the overall project, this is a normal practice in any similar civil engineering project,” noted Diļevs.
On the other hand, commenting on the future of the bridge over the Daugava, he said that funding was not supported in the call for the Connecting European Infrastructure Instrument (CEF10). “The EC said that they would like to see progress on the main track, but they do not reject and do not say that we cannot not apply this activity in the future,” he said.
“The temporary option is to run the traffic over the existing railway bridge. As a temporary option, it works, but in any case, the movement of “Rail Baltica” in this Central Station-Riga Airport direction along the 1435 millimeter (mm) line must be planned. Therefore, this bridge will also have to be built Dilev said.
Regarding the attraction of the private-public partnership (PPP) model to the project, he said that JSC “RB Rail” has engaged a foreign consultant who is evaluating it, adding that in October or November the company will come out with a report on how it will be able to attract these private investments .
Commenting on the total costs of the two international stations in Riga, Diļevs stated that currently the costs are not estimated at a total of one billion, but the Central Station would cost around 565 million, and the airport around 237 million. He explained that the previous estimates were determined under the influence of a very high inflation forecast.
As for the payment of bills to the station builders, he said that by the end of the year it will not be 51 million euros, but much less. “The government supported 9.6 million euros in funding, an invoice for 6.4 million euros has been submitted that needs to be paid, while eight million could be diverted from EDzL’s internal resources and other activities,” Dilev said.
He said that the total amount cannot be named now, but an informative report is being prepared for the Cabinet of Ministers, which could be disclosed in more detail at the end of November.
It has already been reported that according to the research report on the situation of the “Rail Baltica” project carried out by the highest audit institutions of the Baltic States, there is currently no clarity about the operation and management model of the “Rail Baltica” railway line,
According to the data of the latest analysis of costs and benefits of “Rail Baltica”, the total costs of the railway line in the Baltics may reach 23.8 billion euros, including the costs of the first round of the project in the Baltics could be 15.3 billion euros, of which in Latvia – 6.4 billion euros. In the previous cost-benefit analysis in 2017, it was estimated that the project would cost a total of 5.8 billion euros.
In Latvia, the construction of the main line of “Rail Baltica” is planned to start in 2024.
The “Rail Baltica” project envisages the creation of a railway line of European standard gauge from Tallinn to the border of Lithuania and Poland, so that it would be possible to connect the Baltic states with other European countries by rail. In the Baltic States, it is planned to build a new, 870-kilometer-long railway line of European gauge (1,435 millimeters) with a maximum train speed of 240 kilometers per hour.
2024-09-20 02:07:31