The ambitious “Lithuanian Railways” program accelerates. This year, at least two times bigger investments in to the infrastructure of railroads than the last year are planned. Next year, at least 1.5 times bigger sum is planned to be allocated.
This year, the investments in to the infrastructure of railroads should exceed the sum of 100M euros and in 2019, based on preliminary calculations, the sum should be approximate to 200M euros.
With the implementation of railroad infrastructure’s modernization projects it is intended to increase safety and the speed of trains, shorten the time of trips and to increase the capacity of the infrastructure for cargo and passengers transport.
“We intend for every euro to be invested effectively and transparently. Because of this, some of the previously planned public procurements were again inspected and announced later, while some investment plans were changed with cheaper alternatives”, – the general manager of “Lithuanian Railways” Mantas Bartuška spoke.
For example, last year the tender for the “Rail Baltica” Kaunas-Palemonas branch was cancelled. When the tender was announced anew and the competition was ensured, 4M euros were able to be saved.
The necessity to evaluate the need and effectiveness of investments is not the only reason due to which in 2016-2017 there were temporal decreases of investments in to infrastructure. In 2015, an important stage of “Rail Baltica” project was completed – the European track from Poland to Kaunas was laid down. In 2015, more than half out of the sum of 80M euros, which was invested in to infrastructure, was allocated for this.
With the acceleration of the second stage of “Rail Baltica”, the investments will increase. Until 2030, the planned investments in to the infrastructure should be approximately 5.5B euros.
“The major part of these investments will consist of the laying down of “Rail Baltica”. However, this project is not the only one in our plans. The public procurement of electrification, the value of which is more than 2.5M euros, has taken speed”, – notes M. Bartuška.
The total value of public procurements related with infrastructure, which are carried-out this year by “Lithuanian Railways”, exceeds 0.5B euros.
Prior to announcing public procurements, “Lithuanian Railways” carried-out consultations with market participants. The company in the current year has carried-out 27 public market consultations, 8 of them were related with the public procurements carried-out by the Railroad Infrastructure Management.
