Latvia's Rail Baltica Section Faces Potential 5-Year Delay

However, concerns remain about the Latvian stretch of the line; an opposition politician from Riga told a Riigikogu committee Monday that completion could be delayed beyond the planned deadline of 2030. The Latvian government itself says it still hopes that the Rail Baltica main line will be completed by 2030. At the same time, opposition MP Andris Kulbergs, head of the Saeima's Rail Baltica investigative committee, on Monday told members of the Riigikogu that the deadline could slip, by as much as four to five years. While forest is being cleared for a 45-kilometer main line sections, plus a logistics center in Iecava in the south of the country are due to soon be fully completed, the section around Riga is proving more challenging Although it has been agreed that in the first phase at least the high-speed link will not reach the Latvian capital, there is no getting away from the roughly half-a-kilometer wide Daugava River, which bisects the capital from the east. Additionally, the 60-kilometer stretch of line from the border with Estonia to the Riga area is likely to have to remain on the older 1,520 mm gauge rather than the standard European 1,435 mm gauge which Rail Baltica is to follow. According to ministers, the section from Riga towards Estonia is being designed, but there is no money for construction. Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina conceded there are issues, including those relating to funding, but remained optimistic: For one thing, it is not in Latvia's interests not to fully complete the final section up to the Estonian border, she said. "The project could have been in firmer hands, and oversight could have been more effective. But we are on track. From time to time we all have a lack of money, but we will get that resolved. Each Baltic state has its own plans. In Latvia we are talking about a PPP model, but rumors that we will not build [the line] towards Estonia are just that, rumors. It is clear that we need this connection. Not only so that residents can travel to each other, but we also need a route to our NATO partners, Finland and Sweden," Siliņa said. A small section of bridge next to the existing railway bridge in central Riga, where the original Daugava River crossing was earmarked for, has been completed, but there is no money to continue building, the state says. One coalition party — the Union of Greens and Farmers — is also demanding the prosecutor's office determine who is responsible for building this "road to nowhere," though some experts say the Riga issue will sooner or later have to be resolved in any case, given it is the Latvian capital and Salaspils, where the Daugava bridge is to be built, is not. Latvian Minister of Transport Atis Švinka was unable to tell "Aktuaalne kaamera" when the government would decide anything on this matter. So far as funding goes, a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model has been discussed, but there are no publicly known interested parties, he said. Lithuania is home the most complex part of the Rail Baltica route crossing the Baltic states, also a river crossing, the 1.5-kilometer bridge spanning the River Neris, which passes through Vilnius and flows into the Nemunas in Kaunas. Work on this has continued apace, however, and indications are that the section of line in the southernmost Baltic state will remain on schedule. A European Court of Auditors (ECA) special report issued this week found that the project's overall costs across all three Baltic states will be nearly €24 billion, up from the 2020 estimate of a little under €6 billion. Phase one is still on course to be finished in 2030, the report found. Of eight major European infrastructure projects, Rail Baltica's costs have risen the most. Estonia's ECA representative Keit Pentus-Rosimannus said world events had been a factor. "Both the pandemic, the war, rising energy prices and supply difficulties have been affecting this, and clearly the background level of uncertainty around Rail Baltica has not diminished either. All of this affects the likely price. If we are talking about the first stage, which is now likely to be attempted or planned for completion by 2030, then the cost of that first stage alone will be over €15 billion. That too has risen significantly, but the current estimate for the total cost really does reach almost €24 billion," Pentus-Rosimannus said. Rail Baltic Estonia CEO Anvar Salomets said the fact the project would be getting more expensive was already common knowledge two years ago, confirmed by a corresponding report by all three Baltic states' national audit offices. Salomets also confirmed that Estonia will complete its section of the route by the deadline, and indeed has to. "All the prerequisites clearly have to be fulfilled one hundred percent. I am not talking here only about the funding prerequisite, but also about the fact that several prerequisites under construction law — above all those related to southern Pärnu County — have to likewise succeed. Let us say that the time window for physical construction is, undeniably, extremely compressed," Salomets said. The Estonian section of Rail Baltica is currently costing about half a billion euros per year to build, funds which Minister of Infrastructure Kuldar Leis (Reform) said exist both in the current European Union budgetary period and in the next one, starting in 2028. "This is also a reasonable ceiling in terms of the pace to work at. A few months ago, the European Commission came out with its draft for the next budgetary period, where there is twice as much funding for infrastructure topics as there had been so far, which means that if we build today at the pace that has been agreed, then we will certainly obtain that funding," Leis said. According to Leis, 80 percent of the high-speed railway's funding will continue to come from the EU funds, supplemented by the remaining 20 percent funded domestically. The Riigikogu special anti-corruption committee on Monday addressed planned cutbacks in Latvia's portion of the Rail Baltica project and a €4.4 billion funding gap. The Salaspils-Daugava bridge was dubbed the "billion-euro hurdle" in the meeting featuring Andris Kulbergs. In addition to the nearly 300 percent ballooning in costs, the Rail Baltica project is in the ECA's view becoming ever more complex. While the image of the line is as a passenger link, it will have a dual use in terms of capabilities to move around military equipment, or possibly even for north-south freight if the exploitation of Arctic resources continues. --