The money will come from the EU’s Cohesion Fund, which supports investments in the field of environment and trans-European networks in transport infrastructure.
More than €114 million will be put towards the purchase of new electric trains in the Riga and Pieriga region in Latvia and more than €158 million will go toward the electrification of the railway section between Kaišiadorys and Klaipėda, in Lithuania.
The investment in Latvia consists of the purchase of 23 electric multiple unit passenger trains for Latvian railways. New electric trains will replace a part of the outdated Latvian rolling stock, the attractiveness of the railways will be enhanced, and the annual number of public transport journeys undertaken in the country using environmentally friendly means should reach at least 2.7 million in 2023.
In the same vein, the electrification of the railway section in Lithuania will reduce environmental pollution by contributing to a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy in rail transport. The section is a component of the 423.9 km line linking Klaipėda with the Lithuania-Belarus border.
Lithuania’s electrified line currently accounts only for 8% of its railway network and at the moment the Klaipėda-Kaišiadorys section only uses diesel traction, whose emissions account for 3% of all greenhouse gases emitted by the Lithuanian transport sector.
The electrification of railway lines is a key provision of the TENT-T development guidelines to increase the efficiency of the EU railway system.