The year 2025 will go down in the history of the railway line “Rail Baltica” with the division of one line into two different lines, which will be combined when the owl’s tail blooms.
A year has passed since the chairman of the investigation commission of this construction work, Andris Kulbergs, and his like-minded colleagues, have been pushing the “Rail Baltica” project and its implementation so far at the extraordinary session of the Saeima on December 18, 2024. The real consequences of the commission’s work was the finding of the fact that Latvia does not have the courage to abandon the project, the construction of which is dozens of times more expensive than originally planned and whose operation is in principle impossible to pay off. The year 2025 began with promises to continue the project no matter what. The fulfillment of the promise cannot be denied, even if the construction works are very hectic. First of all, the project has not moved from design to construction, but from design to redesign, dividing one railway line into two unrelated lines. Secondly, the construction works are proceeding at such a pace that it is not clear whether they are construction works or a delay in imitation of construction works.
Good Hope Cemetery
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Decisions on the construction of “Rail Baltica” were made in good faith, that the Latvian section of the line will cost one billion euros, of which the European Union will cover 85% officially and 105% in real terms. This meant a ruse that Latvia would charge the taxes collected from the EU money as its co-financing, from which the money would even be left over for other Latvian expenses. Last year it turned out that nothing can be realized from these good intentions.
First of all, the costs turned out to be ten times higher in 2024 prices and several dozen times higher in accordance with the fall in the purchasing power of the euro in an unknown period of time until the completion of the construction works. Secondly, the EU institutions put the responsibility for the price increase on Latvia/Baltia and announced that they have no obligation to cover the nine and all further billions of euros shortfall in the Latvian budget for the construction of “Rail Baltica”. Thirdly, a solution appeared to reduce the costs from 10 to 5 billion euros (in last year’s prices, which will have to be significantly indexed) and to build not a high-speed train, but a low-speed train track to nowhere without stations and access roads. This means building a railway track with one track for oncoming trains that will travel along this track with the task of arriving at the right time and standing on the tracks of the train interchanges. The slow trains will run all over the Baltics, but the most painful thing for Latvia is that they will not run in Riga at all. The case of Riga is a symbol of the fact that “Rail Baltica” is a project in itself, unrelated to how people in the Baltics – at least in Latvia – live and manage.
Prime Ministers compete in kindness
The more the economic futility of Rail Baltica is revealed, the better it advertises the Baltic leaders’ ability to spend money on political intrigues, ideological campaigns or bureaucratic procedures. Irrespective of when, what kind of trains will run on the “Rail Baltica” tracks, the leaders of the Baltic states hope to enter Brussels along the same tracks as the former Prime Minister of Estonia, Kaja Kallas. Bustling around “Rail Baltica” is a mandatory prerequisite for such a crossing, readiness for which was diligently demonstrated by the prime ministers of all three Baltic states at the press conference after their meeting on December 12 in Riga. This time, the answers of the Prime Ministers of Lithuania and Estonia to the question of whether they are not worried about the slow progress of the “Rail Baltica” construction works in Latvia, without which the leaders of the other two Baltic states also would not be able to apply to be those who built “Rail Baltica”.
Prime Minister of Lithuania Inga Ruginiene:
–As far as we have met, it is one of the central themes. I want to express my great joy that the Prime Minister of Latvia has shown us how great progress is and that the project, which caused us anxiety a few years ago, is now in strong hands. Let’s see how it has moved forward and will continue to move. We in Lithuania expect that we will finish it in 2030, and I have no doubt that Latvia will also be by our side then.
Estonian Prime Minister Kristens Michals:
–Latvia’s message is very clear that active planning of the route towards Estonia is also underway. This is positive news, because – look at the map – Estonia is the farthest from the heart of Europe. I have great faith that Evikas Silina’s government will work successfully and we will establish this connection. Even if for several years there has been a question of how to finance it, the new EU planning period gives us hope. This is a very important project for our security and I am sure that we think in the same direction and inspire each other from time to time.
Building in the direction of Lithuania, designing in the direction of Estonia
E. Siliņa’s contribution to the December 12 event regarding “Rail Baltica” was to deny rumors that Latvia would not build the section of “Rail Baltica” from Riga to Estonia. The origin of the rumors is that the builders of the symbolic shovels “Rail Baltica” have so far stuck into the ground outside of Riga (city and airport “Riga”) only between Riga and Lithuania.
According to the information provided by the company authorized to organize (not build) the construction works, “Eropas dzęsza línias” in 2025, preparatory and basic works took place in total 11 km long in several stages, for which four building permits were issued. The modest length of the construction stages is somewhat compensated by the width – with 16.5 ha of land on which the “Rail Baltica” Infrastructure Maintenance Center will be built, which, in turn, will contain the Construction Coordination Base.
In practice, it all starts with cutting down trees and continues as pushing and moving huge mounds of earth. The search for explosive objects is worth mentioning. Such figures are mentioned that the topsoil was removed in the amount of approximately 90 thousand cubic meters, 21 thousand were dug up and more than 100 thousand cubic meters of soil were filled. Such numbers, on the one hand, look impressive, but on the other hand, they signal the amount of work that has not yet been done, because so far the earth has been pushed out only in a few of the hundreds of kilometers of the track.
Next year, it is planned to start such works with a length of 30 km.
The builders have returned to the Riga Central railway station
The construction of “Rail Baltic” in Latvia began not with kilometers, but with meters, rebuilding the Riga Central railway station and starting to build a new railway station near the “Riga” airport. The connection of these stations via a new railway bridge across the Daugava should have become the first and, as people talked about in the corners, the last section of “Rail Baltica” in Latvia.
There was hope that the non-building of “Rail Baltica” in Latvia could be hidden behind the failure of the “Rail Baltica” project in Lithuania, if the Lithuanians had allowed themselves to spend the “Rail Baltica” money not on laying new 1,435 mm tracks from Kaunas to Latvia, but to Vilnius and maybe even to Klaipėda. Lithuania needed a powerful railway connection with Poland, not with Latvia, because all railway freight traffic between Lithuania and Latvia is ensured by the already existing tracks through the railway junction in Jelgava. But, no! The Lithuanians first invaded Latvia by dismantling the track from Mažeikai to Latvia, and then invaded Latvia a second time while building the new railway line to Latvia, which must be countered by their construction work in the direction of Lithuania.
As a result, money ran out for the connection between the center of Riga and the airport, the new bridge of which Latvia needs more than the entire “Rail Baltica” track. Namely, the current railway bridge will fall into the Daugava, because the 1955 construction cannot last forever, but it is scary to combine the operation of the bridge with the repair (due to such fears, the repair of the Vansu bridge is also postponed and postponed). The degree of degradation of the Latvian railway is shown to the public by the railway overpass from the Central Station to the Daugava Bridge across Benjaminas (formerly Lermontova) Street.
It’s quite terrible when the old concrete is eroded by streams of water that come down along the junction of the new and old parts of the overpass and through all kinds of cracks. The visual impression is that the old pillars would have already collapsed if Russia had not invaded Ukraine and therefore the transit of coal through the center of Riga to the newly built coal port on Krievu Island had not been stopped. Now these supports only have to withstand the weight of passenger trains and the vibrations created, which they will – let’s believe – be capable of for some time to come. “European Railway Lines” writes about this view that the old supports belong to “Latvian Railways”.
The last few weeks have been pleasing with the fact that the builders have returned to the Central Station and are covering its newly built frame with a roof. The picture shows these works on the afternoon of December 17.
It could take another five years to move the railroad tracks from the old supports to the new supports and then hope that there will be money to remove or replace the old supports. “European railway lines” could not tell about the deadline of these works, nor about the result.
Concrete at the airport is not spared
“European Railway Lines” also informs about the works at Riga Airport. The works there are planned with scope. A multi-level traffic hub is to be built, trains will run in the air, ie on an air bridge. By the end of this year, almost 400 meters of the overpass deck has been concreted out of the total of 1,300 meters ordered. All ordered 41 flyover support concreting works have been completed.
With the currently available funding, it is planned that the construction works of the first stage of the overpass towards the north, i.e. Riga, will be completed by the end of next year. Thus, for several more years, these flyovers will be annoying as incomprehensible concrete formations. Only very recently, on October 7, the government, after coordination with the European Commission, was allowed to redistribute the money balances of various EU aid funds for the section of the tracks connecting the airport and the city center from Zolitudes Street in Riga to Dzirnieku Street in Mārupe. At the beginning of next year, it is planned to start the construction of the embankment towards the north of the airport territory and the construction of the overpass over K. Ulmaņas gatvi, in the middle or the end of next year, the construction of the track (embankment) from the overpass of K. Ulmaņas gatvi to Zolitūdes Street should begin. List of works so far without a final – without a deadline for the first trip to or from the airport by train.
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