The high-speed railway that’s uncoupling the Baltic states from Russia and their Soviet past

The largest infrastructure project in the Baltic region for a hundred years is underway.

The 870 km Rail Baltica project will connect the capitals of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia with Warsaw and the rest of Europe, allowing trains from the continent to run uninterrupted.

However, the project is symbolic as well as physical.

For the EU, it’s a statement about the Baltic states’ return to Europe and their decoupling from their Soviet past.

Talk of an inter-Baltic rail project has grown since the late 1990s, with a cooperation agreement being signed by Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian transport ministers in 2001.

However, it wasn’t until 2010 that a memorandum was signed by representatives of the transport ministries of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland.

While it currently takes seven hours to drive from Lithuania’s capital to Estonia’s, the new line will almost half that to just three hours and 38 minutes.

The railway will begin in Tallinn before passing through Pärnu, Rīga, Panevėžys, and Kaunas before reaching the Lithuanian-Polish border; there will also be a connection to Vilnius from Kaunas.

Once completed, trains will be able to travel up to the Baltics from Poland, with passenger trains operating at top speeds of 234 km/h.

While the project doesn’t come cheap at an estimated cost of €5.8 billion, the project’s cost-benefit analysis predicts the project would bring in up to €16.2 billion in quantifiable benefits.

The project’s cost for the Baltic countries is alleviated due to the EU funding up to 85 per cent of the project through its Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) instrument.

So far, the EU CEF fund has contributed €824 million to the new line.

The scheme is so colossal that its construction alone is expected