An effective westbound transport corridor requires “Baltic Railway“railway line and the” Via Baltica “road, said the Minister of Transport on Thursday at the International Transport Innovation Forum in Vilnius Talis Linkait (K).
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According to the statement by Baiba Ābelniece, adviser to the minister for communication matters, at the event Linkaits stressed that the transport sector has been hit by several crises in recent years, first of all COVID-19 the pandemic and now the impact of the war, which forces the reprogramming and reorientation of freight corridors.
He said he succeeded to a great extent in Latvian ports, attracting new types of goods and creating new forms of cooperation, for example by supplying the coal needed to Poland from Colombia and other distant countries via Latvian ports.
The Minister of Transport said that the “Rail Baltica” railway line was necessary before, but now especially to ensure efficient and fast connectivity for the transport of goods between the Baltic states and Western Europe.
“The lack of this railway line is also felt for the provision of transport Ukrainian for agricultural load. When planning how to transport them more effectively from Ukraine to the ports of the Baltic states by rail, the track widths have to be changed twice along the way, making this transport corridor insufficiently efficient, “said Linkaits.
The minister stressed that in this situation it is important that the Baltic states and Poland work together to find the most convenient solutions.
He said that, at the same time as the construction of the new railway, it is also necessary to fix the road infrastructure, because it is clear that the load on the “Via Baltica” increases significantly every year.
Linkaits expressed the hope that in the next few years it will be possible to transform this highway into a faster and safer transport corridor.
At the International Transport Innovation Forum in Vilnius, officials agreed to sign a Memorandum of Understanding between Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Finland, Germany and Sweden, confirming their commitment to cooperation and finding an approach common, introducing secure solutions and effective data exchange in logistics processes in freight transport in the Baltic Sea in the region. It plans to promote the use of electronic documents by switching to them completely in the future for all types of freight transport.
