Heads of Baltic rail companies to discuss cooperation in Riga

RIGA - The heads of the national railway companies of Estonia and Lithuania will meet in Riga this Thursday, January 12 to discuss the latest developments in the Baltic railway industry and agree on future cooperation in the current geopolitical circumstances, LETA was told at Latvia's national rail company Latvijas Dzelzcels (LDz, Latvian Railways).

Chairman of the Board at Estonian Railways (Eesti Raudtee) Kaido Zimmermann and head of Lithuanian Railways (Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai) Egidijus Lazauskas will arrive in Riga at the invitation of LDz CEO Maris Kleinbergs. 

Kleinbergs indicated that by holding regular meetings with CEOs of Europe’s largest international railway organizations to discuss current affairs in the transport industry, we are becoming increasingly more convinced that our cooperation partners in global markets see the Baltic countries as a single transport corridor. 

"We are united by both the same track gauge and various common challenges, therefore it is particularly important to look for new opportunities for even closer cooperation between the railways of the three Baltic countries, developing internal Baltic freight transport by rail and improving the Baltic region’s competitiveness in the transport sector as a whole," the head of the Latvian railway company said. 

He added that at the end of 2022, European Union (EU) institutions at the end of 2022 brought up the question of a possible transition of the railway infrastructure to the standard gauge in all EU member countries, and that is one of the reasons why the Baltic railway companies have to get together to discuss the purpose and potential impact of such a project. 

During the meeting, the heads of the Baltic railway companies will discuss the key latest developments in the industry, such as plans to switching the Baltic railway infrastructure to the standard gauge, development of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T), the future of the 1,520 mm gauge railway network, as well as various other cooperation projects.

Latvijas Dzelzcels is a state-owned railway company. Latvijas Dzelzcels group comprises the parent company, Latvijas Dzelcels, and six subsidiaries: LatRailNet, LDz Cargo, LDz Infrastruktura, LDz Ritosa Sastava Serviss, LDz Apsardze, and LDz Logistika.