Civil tender worth €24 million launched for 2nd section of Rail Baltica Mainline in Estonia

Riga, Lativa (Urban Transport News): If everything goes according to plan, we will be able to start the construction of Rail Baltica’s main line in Harju County already in the fall of this year, where the construction company will also have to work on the section starting from the Ülemiste terminal. We are also planning to announce at least a few more construction tenders for the mainline sections this year.

RB Rail AS has launched tender for the construction of Rail Baltica mainline section in Harju County. The bids  are expected until March 16, 2023 and expected cost of work is 24 million euros.

Approximately 30 kilometers of Rail Baltica’s main route could still be awarded for construction this year. This would mean that by the first half of 2024, approximately 40 kilometers of the Rail Baltica mainline would already be under construction.

The construction section starting from the east side of Ülemiste station is 4.8 km long and runs until the intersection of Lagedi road in Soodevahe Rae municipality. This mainline section also includes partial construction of the embankment of the Ülemiste rolling stock depot, as well as construction of embankment of the railway section of the perspective car-carrier station.

The width of the embankment of the main route to be built is 14 to 20 meters in this section, and if the procurement is successful, construction work is planned to start in the fall of 2023.

RB Rail AS has recently selected three international bidders which have been qualified for the 2nd stage of the Rail Baltica energy subsystem design and construction procurement. This is considered as the largest railway cross-border electrification project in Europe since the subsystem will be deployed in a consolidated way across all 870km mainline from Tallinn to the Lithuania-Poland border and from Kaunas to Vilnius.

“COBELEC Rail Baltica” (partnership formed by Cobra Instalaciones y Servicios S.A. and Elecnor Servicios y Proyectos S.A.U.) from Spain, “ALSTOM-BMGS-GE-Torpol” (partnership formed by “BMGS” AS, “Bombardier Transportation Baltics” SIA, ALSTOM Transport SA, GE Energy Power Conversion France SAS, TORPOL S.A.) from Latvia, France and Poland, and “STC Baltic Electrification” (partnership formed by COLAS RAIL AS, Siemens Mobility GmbH, Siemens Mobility Oy Latvijas filiāle, TSO SAS) from France, Germany and Latvia are qualified for the 2nd stage of the tender, which is planned to commence in the following months with an aim to sign the contract by the end of 2023.

European Union will co-finance up to 85% of the total eligible costs through the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) with the remaining financing granted by the three Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.