News

By the 16 July 2020 vote of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Committee, the Rail Baltica Global project in the Baltic States has been granted additional EUR 184 million CEF financing to be invested in the Project implementation until 2024. Together with 15% national co-financing, the total investment amounts to EUR 216 million in additional funding for the project. Together with the currently signed grant agreement contracts, Rail Baltica in the three Baltic states has thereby already secured around EUR 1.2 billion from the EU and national funds. 

In June, four public consultations on the environmental impact assessment regarding the Rail Baltica project took place in an online environment due to social-distancing requirements. “Gathering people’s opinions is also possible in this way and it yields meaningful results,” admitted Rail Baltica’s project expert, Karmo Kõrvek.

The Joint Venture of the Baltic States, RB Rail AS has completed a tender for the evaluation of construction project solutions and construction expertise for the Rail Baltica line in Estonia and Lithuania. The contract has been awarded to a consortium, consisting of 3TI PROGETTI ITALIA S.p.A. (Italy) and YUKSEL PROJE A (Turkey). The value of the contract for Estonia is 1 529 233,91 EUR; and for Lithuanian – 686 808,45 EUR. Procurement for the Latvian section is still ongoing.

Geotechnical work will commence in July on the Rail Baltica section from Tootsi to Ikla. Over the course of almost two years of work, the geotechnical properties of the subsoil of the railway and related facilities will be determined.

Implementer of the Rail Baltica project in Latvia – company Eiropas Dzelzceļa līnijas has announced an open tender for the technical engineering and construction supervision services for Rail Baltica station and related infrastructure at Riga International Airport. The supervision services will have to be provided during the construction and warranty period of the station building, access roads, railway viaduct and the new railway line.

The Joint Venture of the Baltic States, RB Rail AS has completed the tender for the provision of the Notified Body services to assess and verify conformity of the Rail Baltica infrastructure including trackside infrastructure, energy, control-command and signalling subsystems, with the European Technical Specifications for Interoperability (TSI). The contract has been awarded to the partnership of Certifer SA and Network Rail Certification Body Limited.

RB Rail AS’s cooperation partner, the Spanish-recognized engineering company IDOM Consulting, Engineering, Architecture, has completed technical solutions for the location and intersections of the railway line for the Rail Baltica sub-section from Ülemiste to Kangru. The total length of the section is approximately 16 kilometers. This is one of the three sub-sections that remain on the 48-kilometer design section of Tallinn-Rapla.

A collaborator of RB Rail AS, Spanish engineering firm IDOM Consulting Engineering, has completed the technical design solutions for the detailed location of the Pärnu-Rapla railway section and its intersections, spanning from the border of Harju county to Tootsi. The Alu-Mälivere section shown in the video is 14.1 kilometers long.

Lietuvos Geležinkelių Infrastruktūra, which is responsible for the construction of the Rail Baltica railway in the territory of Lithuania, is launching contracting tenders. The winning contractors will be constructing a railway and engineering buildings from Kaunas to Panevėžys and the longest railway bridge in the Baltic States, which will span the Neris river near Jonava.

This week, RB Rail AS, the Baltic joint venture and lead implementer of the Rail Baltica project, is holding the second phase of online meetings with the potential suppliers of rail infrastructure components with a particular focus on concrete elements.

Spain’s IDOM responsible for detailed technical design of Rail Baltica section Kaunas-Ramygala will present design proposals for section Šveicarija-Žeimiai on the 8th of July.

Ms Jovita Starynina is BIM (Building information modelling) and Asset Information Management Coordinator at RB Rail AS and now also a proud holder of a doctoral degree in Technological sciences and Civil engineering from Vilnius Gediminas Technical University in Lithuania. She finished her studies this year with a doctoral thesis on Energy efficiency improvement in modernization of public buildings using sustainable design methods.

Andrejs Mislevics is a Railway Systems Engineer who moved back to Riga, Latvia, after working in the German railway sector for nearly seven years. Andrejs is one of the five experts who have returned from working abroad to help build Rail Baltica.

Sweco Lietuva has two roles in the Rail Baltica project: it is part of the consortium that is responsible for the infrastructure development plan and the environmental assessment of the Vilnius-Kaunas section of the track, and its labs provide soil testing services for the geotechnical investigation.

The state of emergency caused by the spread of COVID has forced significant changes to our personal and professional lives. The long-term consequences of these changes are still hard to assess but already now many of us are thinking “how will we recover once the state of emergency is lifted?” As the Baltic region’s Project of the Century, Rail Baltica has to play a key role in both helping the Baltic economies weather the current storm, but also in providing a sustained investment stimulus towards medium and longer term economic and social recovery.