The Rail Baltica project rail line designed to improve connections between Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, is progressing well.
In March 2019, the RB Rail AS company, which is responsible for completing the Rail Baltica railway corridor project, presented the operational plan of connections between Warsaw and three major Baltic cities. The plan foresees that four pairs of trains will be coursing between Tallinn and Warsaw.
The journey from Warsaw to Vilnius will take 4 hours and 7 minutes; 5 hours and 3 minutes to Riga and 6 hours and 47 minutes to Tallinn.
Warsaw is meant to be the starting point of the Rail Baltica line while the rest of the route will lead through Kaunas in Lithuania, Riga in Latvia and finally will stop in Estonia’s capital Tallinn. Regional connections in the Baltic states have also been designed. The trains will ride at a speed of 160 kilometers per hour.
Poland is also currently modernizing its Warsaw-Białystok railway section to accommodate the increase in rail traffic.
The competition for the design of the terminal station in Tallinn has also concluded with Zaha Hadid Architects winning. The station is meant to be one of the most modern in Europe and will have a modular structure, including solutions to increase the station’s energy efficiency.
The new station will be located on Tallinn’s outskirts, close to the airport. City rail will connect the station with Tallinn’s port where ships frequently depart to Helsinki in Finland.
The station is planned to be fully operational in 2026. All the rail connections which comprise Rail Baltica are also planned to be modernized during the same time period.
Poland is currently modernizing the Warsaw-Białystok route, which is to be completed in 2021. In 2020, the modernization of the Białystok-Ełk route will be initiated and construction will last until 2023.
The final stage will be the reconstruction of the railway from Ełk to the Lithuanian border, which will take place between 2022 and 2025.
