Polish Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Piotr Malepszak has said that the Rail Baltica project is unlikely to be completed before 2040, given the ever-increasing costs and technical requirements, ERR News reports.
Malepszak told the Financial Times that completing Rail Baltica by 2030 is not possible, and that it would be cheaper and faster to renovate and improve the existing infrastructure. The deputy minister, himself a railway engineer, said that according to his current estimates, the entire railway line could be completed by 2040.
The politician stressed that politicians, including those working in Brussels, should stop fooling themselves by insisting on completing the project by 2030.
Marko Kivila, chairman of the board of RB Rail, was more optimistic. According to him, construction plans are aligned with the goal of completing the project by 2030. Kivila also added that the main factor is financing, and any significant delay in allocating funds will require adjusting the schedule.
The European Commission has indicated that the project must be completed in 2030, including its parts in Poland.
Malepszak, however, emphasized the rapidly increasing costs of the project. In 2017, the countries involved in the project estimated that the total cost would be 5.8 billion euros, but an audit conducted in 2024 increased the amount fourfold, to 23.8 billion euros. The deputy minister also added that work on the last and most complex section of Rail Baltica in Poland (80 kilometers long from Ełk to the Lithuanian border) will not begin until 2030 at the earliest. A new railway line will be built there, and the cost will reach four billion euros.
According to Malepszak, Rail Baltica will not be completed on time due to a lack of funding, EU technical requirements, and also because the construction costs are rising. He pointed out that Brussels should abandon its impressive ambitions and reassess the technical requirements. Among them is the requirement that the speed of trains must be at least 160 kilometers per hour, which would force Poland to build new tracks instead of using existing ones. Also, the EU does not have enough funds to start construction on all stages at the same time.
The 1,230-kilometer track will connect Warsaw with Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, thus adding the Baltic states to the European train network.
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