Rail Baltica

tasky · 30 May 2019

I couldn't find a thread on Rail Baltica, so I thought I'd start one to track its progress

For anyone unaware, it's a 249km/h high-speed line connecting Tallinn in Estonia to Riga in Latvia, to Kaunas in Lithuania, with a spur to Vilnius, Lithuania's capital.

It'll have through services to Warsaw, and apparently a sleeper service to Berlin

It looks like a really exciting project and actually seems to be making headway

The planned timetable looks like a huge improvement on the current situation:

And a planned connections map, showing sleeper trains to Berlin and Vienna

Here's the latest news on the latest round of contracts being awarded from IRJ https://www.railjournal.com/passenger/high-speed/rail-baltica-awards-two-more-contracts/

What do people make of this? There are lots of interesting rail projects going on over Europe but out of all of them this one probably has the most interesting mix of "ambitious" and "will actually happen".

RailUK Forums

tasky · 30 May 2019

Here's an article from the Polish press that confirms the existing line in Poland, from Czyżew (half way from Warsaw) to Bialystok is being modernised to 200kph for the services.

The journey Warsaw to Bialystok should be down to under two hours, which is a decent improvement on the existing 2 hours 25 minutes average. (Seems equivalent to latest modernisation of the WCML in Britain) That improvement obviously isn't as dramatic as the new-build Rail Baltica section.

https://poranny.pl/rail-baltica-szy...wy-zajmie-dwie-godziny-zdjecia/ar/c1-14023357

LNW-GW Joint · 30 May 2019

It's an EU project with most of the funding coming from outside the Baltics, so it's very popular there.
The kind of project we would be paying towards if it wasn't for Brexit.
It does have plenty of positive PR, but I wouldn't say it was certain yet.
The local planners have hardly got to grips with it yet, and the business case is unproven as current traffic is practically nil.
There have already been governance issues, with management walkouts over lack of cooperation at a national level.
I think there's a long way to go.
Meanwhile the most important original line in the region, the Warsaw-St Petersburg railway, lies practically moribund as it repeatedly crosses national and EU borders.

https://www.railwaygazette.com/news...senger-and-freight-service-plan-unveiled.html

EUROPE: Rail Baltica project promoter RB Rail has unveiled details of the proposed operational plan for the future 1 435 mm gauge line running 870 km from the Polish border to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
The operational plan for 2026–56 has been developed by ETC Gauff Mobility, COWI and Institut für Bahntechnik, based on predicted market demand and development.

Passenger services
It is proposed that there would be four fast passenger trains per day from Tallinn to Warszawa and four from Tallinn to Vilnius when the line opens in 2026, increasing to six per day within 10 years. In addition, there would be six trains per day between Vilnius, Kaunas and Warszawa, increasing to 10 later. These services would together provide a link between the Baltic capitals every two hours.

There would also be Tallinn – Riga – Kaunas – Warszawa – Berlin and Vilnius – Kaunas – Warszawa – Berlin overnight trains.
A shuttle service running every 30 min would connect Riga’s main station and international airport in 11 min.
The plan also identifies the potential for the operation of 200 km/h regional services, subject to additional studies and government decisions. It suggests there could be sufficient passenger demand for domestic services from Tallinn to Pärnu, from Riga to Bauska and Salacgrīva and from Marijampole via Kaunas to Vilnius. There could also be demand for cross-border services, including Marijampole – Riga and Tallinn – Riga airport

tasky · 30 May 2019

LNW-GW Joint said:
Meanwhile the most important original line in the region, the Warsaw-St Petersburg railway, lies practically moribund as it repeatedly crosses national and EU borders.

I may be misremembering but I think this was part of the justification of the project - basically, avoid Belarus (and also have a standard gauge line)

edwin_m · 30 May 2019

The Baltics have been occupied multiple times by either the Germans to the west or the Russians to the east, with the rail networks being re-gauged accordingly. Certainly in Latvia the Russian gauge network mainly carries freight between the ex-Soviet countries and ice-free ports as well as the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Rail Baltica aims to add a north-south standard gauge link, very much for strategic purposes in tying the Baltics to the rest of the EU as with the Via Baltica motorway in hte same corridor. The ultimate ambition is a fixed link to Helsinki.

paddington · 30 May 2019

The buses between the Baltic capitals seem to be well patronised and although they try to make it comfortable, the journey just takes too long. I looked into Warsaw-Kaunas by train but it wasn't feasible for what I needed to do. I hope this project comes to fruition ASAP.

tasky · 30 May 2019

edwin_m said:
The Baltics have been occupied multiple times by either the Germans to the west or the Russians to the east, with the rail networks being re-gauged accordingly. Certainly in Latvia the Russian gauge network mainly carries freight between the ex-Soviet countries and ice-free ports as well as the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Rail Baltica aims to add a north-south standard gauge link, very much for strategic purposes in tying the Baltics to the rest of the EU as with the Via Baltica motorway in hte same corridor. The ultimate ambition is a fixed link to Helsinki.

Obviously take with a pinch of salt, but the tunnel to Helsinki does seem to have a bit of momentum – 15 billion euros from a Chinese investor apparently

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...lion-in-helsinki-tallinn-tunnel-idUSKCN1QP0JD

A train tunnel linking Helsinki with Estonia’s capital Tallinn has got a provisional 15 billion euros ($17 billion) in financing from China’s Touchstone Capital Partners, the latest infrastructure investment in Beijing’s Belt and Road plan.

FinEst Bay Area Development said on Friday it had signed a memorandum of understanding providing a third of the funding in private equity, which will give Touchstone a minority stake in the planned 100 km (60-mile) tunnel, and two-thirds in debt.

JonathanP · 31 May 2019

The project has already borne fruit in the form of a standard gauge link between Poland and Lithuania.

However the actual service doesn't quite match the lofty goals. Currently there are 5 train pairs... per week(2 on weekends and on sunday night/morning morning) and the total travel time with 2 changes from Warsaw to Vilnius is 10 hours.

gordonthemoron · 31 May 2019

JonathanP said:
The project has already borne fruit in the form of a standard gauge link between Poland and Lithuania.

However the actual service doesn't quite match the lofty goals. Currently there are 5 train pairs... per week(2 on weekends and on sunday night/morning morning) and the total travel time with 2 changes from Warsaw to Vilnius is 10 hours.

The service was better when you had to change trains at the first station in Lithuania, at least it ran daily (I did it in 2012)

Single-track · 31 May 2019

tasky said:
Obviously take with a pinch of salt, but the tunnel to Helsinki does seem to have a bit of momentum – 15 billion euros from a Chinese investor apparently

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...lion-in-helsinki-tallinn-tunnel-idUSKCN1QP0JD

We might see a tunnel in the medium-to-long term (i.e. by 2040) but the regional politicians have their own ideas on where the tunnel should go once it reaches the Finnish shore and the chances of a route being agreed upon by 2024, let alone the start of actual construction, are remote, to put it mildly.

AlbertBeale · 17 Jun 2019

I've seen and heard comment from normally well-informed people - though not in this forum - about how great it'll be to finally have a line connecting the 3 Baltic countries [and beyond], given that existing - though now much less used - long-distance connections run (for historic reasons) from each of the 3 countries towards Russia. People seem not to know that there always was - in Soviet times, and for a time after the break-up - a through connection Tallinn - Riga - Vilnius (and on to Poland).

I caught a through train in the 1990s (ie after the Baltic states, inter alia, had left the Soviet Union) from Tallinn to Warsaw. It was admittedly an old-fashioned Soviet-style train, and a slow journey, with sleeper carriages (the Vilnius-Warsaw part was overnight, through a corner of Belarus where the bogies were changed to standard gauge before entering Poland).

I understood from contacts in the region that after the Baltic states joined the EU, the latter's emphasis on commercial competition and - in most situations - against public subsidies, combined with the three governments' antipathy to services being publicly-owned (which they associated with the Soviet regime), meant the three countries wouldn't improve or even support the existing line and so it fell into disuse. I was shocked, when thinking of re-visiting the region some years back, to find that travelling by train was no longer an option.

I've always thought it would have made sense to maintain a service - even a slow one - for the last quarter of a century, until such time as a new line is built. (And, incidentally, there has recently been some opposition in the region to spending so much money on a swish new line rather than upgrading existing railway infrastructure.)

Adlington · 17 Jun 2019

LNW-GW Joint said:
It's an EU project with most of the funding coming from outside the Baltics, so it's very popular there.

I'm not so sure about "very popular" in the Baltics. Here is a decisively unenthusiastic point of view from Estonia:

when the decades-old idea of building Rail Baltica re-emerged from the dusty shelves in 2015, with a funding approved by the European Commission, most Estonians first expressed enthusiasm for the project. According to a survey conducted in October 2015, 69% of people aware of the Rail Baltica project supported it. But public opinion has dwindled since. The latest survey, published in March 2018, showed that now just 52% of people – a very narrow majority – support the project.

In autumn 2015, the budget was estimated at €4 billion. Two years later, the estimated cost had increased to almost €6 billion. And while the European Commission has agreed to co-fund 85% of the costs involved to build the Rail Baltica, it is still unclear how much money will the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian governments have to pour into it to maintain the huge infrastructure project afterwards.

In 2017, Ernst & Young Balticprepared a cost-benefit analysis on the Rail Baltica, at the request of the Riga-based Rail Baltica coordinator company, Rail Baltic AS. In the analysis, EY said the project’s long-term profitability lies in its wider socio-economic benefits, such as cleaner air and fewer road deaths due to less car traffic on the Tallinn–Riga–Kaunas route.

But in January 2018, the Estonian pro-transparency NGO, Avalikult Rail Balticust (Openly About Rail Baltica), published a 82-page study which proved the EY analysis contained unjustified benefits valued at least €4.1 billion and would not generate enough benefits for society. For example, EY stated the biggest benefit of Rail Baltica will arise from the liquidation of air pollution. But the NGO’s study proved trucks do not generate the claimed volumes of air pollution in the Baltic states. Manipulation of the emission standards and fuel consumption of trucks had artificially increased the socio-economic benefits claimed in the EY analysis, the NGO said.

Source

edwin_m · 17 Jun 2019

AlbertBeale said:
I understood from contacts in the region that after the Baltic states joined the EU, the latter's emphasis on commercial competition and - in most situations - against public subsidies, combined with the three governments' antipathy to services being publicly-owned (which they associated with the Soviet regime), meant the three countries wouldn't improve or even support the existing line and so it fell into disuse. I was shocked, when thinking of re-visiting the region some years back, to find that travelling by train was no longer an option.

I've always thought it would have made sense to maintain a service - even a slow one - for the last quarter of a century, until such time as a new line is built. (And, incidentally, there has recently been some opposition in the region to spending so much money on a swish new line rather than upgrading existing railway infrastructure.)

The EU has no objection in principle to undertakings receiving public funds, but it does tend to require that they are spent transparently including open tendering rather than just giving the money to the existing operator. Passenger Train (the passenger arm of Latvian Railways) has been in trouble at least once for illegal activities in relation to procurement of rolling stock. I don't claim to be an expert on the details but I would expect that operation of Rail Baltica passenger services would be tendered, probably as a single company rather than one for each country given the small size of the three operators that would create. Freight would be open to any operator meeting the required technical standards and any subsidy would be operator-neutral - given the distance involved a commercial freight operation is a possibiity.

Adlington said:
I'm not so sure about "very popular" in the Baltics. Here is a decisively unenthusiastic point of view from Estonia:
Source

Unusual to see an allegation of a study over-estimating the pollution from road vehicles!

Adlington · 18 Jun 2019

edwin_m said:
Unusual to see an allegation of a study over-estimating the pollution from road vehicles!

Depends who commissions the study: road lobby or rail lobby...

gingerheid · 18 Jun 2019

From my reading of Estonian news I get the impression that it's more popular than HS2 is here.

Estonia is certainly assuming that it is happening, as it is the intended replacement for the service from Tallinn to Pärnu, which stopped (on the branch off the remaining Viljandi line) last December as it wasn't deemed worthwhile to carry out a necessary upgrade of the line a few years ahead of Rail Baltica providing a far superior service.

The types of people that oppose are the same types as do the same here; populists that want to say something controversial for publicity, and people that either intentionally or unintentionally are unable to see the use of a railway.

Public transport projects have a good reputation in Estonia. Since the replacement of every train with a modern non socviet replacement a few years ago, and since the almost completed upgrades of almost every line that remains open, Estonian rail has undergone a renaissance that means it is for the first time in a long time a sensible way of travelling. The new faster and more frequent services are starting to suffer overcrowding, and extra trains will shortly be ordered to further increase services. There is a (short) stretch of new track currently being built and an active campaign to extend that to what will be the biggest town in Estonia that sensibly could have a train service but currently doesn't (apart from Pärnu). Trams, ferries and airports have also seen significant improvements, and a significant number of buses (except express coaches) are free.

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