Timetable set for new transport development

  • 2003-09-18
  • Michael West
VILNIUS - Traveling through the Baltic states and Poland, one cannot fail to notice
the contrasting standards in roads and railways crossing from one country
into another. In comparison with its neighbors Lithuania has a good road
network, a legacy of the local Soviet authority's choice to favor road
building.
Its rail network, however, has suffered from years of under investment and
troubles associated with its structural orientation ‹ which was geared
toward military purposes and pointed in the direction of Moscow rather than
a more commercially natural north-south route.
With such inconsistencies common to all of Eastern Europe, in 1994 the
European Commission nominated 10 combined road and rail corridors for
thorough development, ensuring that their standards would be of the highest
quality.
The first corridor was to run from Warsaw to Helsinki, connecting the Baltic
states with the EU. But plans to implement the two component parts, Rail
Baltica and Via Baltica, have stagnated in the face of differing financial
and political situations among those countries involved in the ambitious
projects.
Combined, such hold-ups can only have damaged Lithuania's competitiveness.
Therefore the positive pledges made at a meeting earlier this month by Lesek
Miller, Poland's prime minister, were welcomed by its Baltic partners as a
signal to begin work in earnest.
Meanwhile, a recent meeting between the prime ministers of Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania, Poland and Finland, along with the vice-president of the European
Commission, Loyola de Palacio, saw a firm commitment made towards speeding
up the whole process of improved and integrated travel corridors, in
addition to considering the option to develop the Finnish proposal
"motorways of the [Baltic] Sea."
Speaking after the meeting, de Palacio said that projects such as Corridor I
were important for the whole of Europe and that these agreements enabled
their inclusion onto the EU's list of the 22 highest priority transport
infrastructure projects to be completed by 2020. She added that work should
be underway by 2010. It is envisaged that up to 90 percent of the project's
2.5 billion euro cost could be met by the EU. The strength of the link
between investment in transport infrastructure and economic growth is open
to debate, with a wide range of different opinions. What remains certain,
however, is that with economic development comes increased traffic and a
more urgent need for the region to invest in its transport infrastructure.
Albertas Aruna, director of Lithuania's transport investment directorate at
the Ministry of Transport, expressed his concerns with the existing
bottlenecks in the system.
"Eleven million tons [of goods] cross the border every year Š this is
growing by 16 percent every year," he said.
According to Aruna, heavy loads make up over half of the total tonnage ‹ and
this proportion is expected to grow rapidly. Currently the roads accommodate
the vast majority of this freight, but to meet ecological and efficiency
targets, it is necessary to transfer much of this traffic onto the railway.
Many expect that the development of a multimodal transport corridor ­ one
that combines road, rail and sea ports ‹ will provide a greater number of
options for easier transit.
The poor condition of transport links between Poland and Lithuania has come
under particular scrutiny. Unlike Lithuania, Poland's Soviet legacy bestowed
it with a weak road network, especially in its eastern regions. Since 1991,
Poland has naturally concentrated its resources in its Western provinces
that border existing EU member states, putting the links to the Baltic
states on the backburner.
This has resulted in large gaps emerging between Lithuania's and Poland's
level of infrastructure development: while Lithuania aims to complete its
section of the Via Baltica this year, to date, Poland has only completed
about a fifth of its portion.
A passenger railway was connected between the two countries in 1992 but is
nowhere close to fulfilling its true potential, with the journey from Warsaw
to Vilnius taking almost 12 hours.
Aruna expressed his concern that Lithuania needs to keep up with the rest of
Europe, where numerous projects to build high-speed railways are already in
progress. While some headway has been made in rebuilding connecting roads,
very little has happened with the country's railway system.
Current numbers suggest that nations must think quickly about promoting
their core interests within the EU in order to reap the maximum amount of
developmental support. The Finnish idea to complement Corridor I with its
"motorways of the Baltic Sea" proposal is a good example of this. According
to Aruna, while Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia can count no more than six
ports that would receive funding, Finland has lined up 18.