We had a prominent guest speaker on our meeting Friday the 27th of January: Mr. Burhan Erkan, the lead engineer for the mammoth project "Rail Baltica" and responsible mainly for the Latvia section. He is employed by Deutsche Bahn Engineering & Consulting (DBEC). DBEC is one of the largest engineering companies in the world for new big railway projects.
Rail Baltica is currently the largest infrastructure project in the European Union.
Mr Erkan told us about the project and some challenges he has been experiencing during this work.
The total length of the railway is 870 km from the Polish/Lithuanian border to Tallinn. It will be built according to European standard and totally electrified, it will be constructed for a train speed of 250 km/h. In the future there are plans to make a tunnel from Helsinki to Tallinn (use the ferry traffic in the beginning) and to modernize the railway on the Polish side.
The plan is to connect to the Trans-European Network to the benefit of the Baltic countries and Finland.
One big challenge is that the Baltic countries have not done any main railway projects in 100 years and not at all when it comes to electrified railway. There is very limited competence on all levels including management. So the construction is done with a lot of competence hired from different countries like Germany, Spain and Italy.
It is also a green-field project meaning that there is nothing to build on, everything has to be done from the beginning.
The official cost for the project is 6.7 billion EUR (whereof EU is paying 85%) but given all the challenges and different demands from the involved countries the cost will become much more that that.
The original plan is to be ready by 2026, but it will take several more years.
But one thing is clear, this project will give great benefit to the involved countries!