Ambitious High-Speed Rail Plans Advance in the Baltic Region
A new train line would more than halve travel times between Tallinn and Warsaw. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it’s also taken on a political role.
A new Skoda electric train at a rail terminus in Riga, Latvia, near the partly built Rail Baltica hub in June, 2024. The rail megaproject that aims to link the Baltic region to the rest of Europe by the end of the decade faces a funding shortfall of at least €10 billion.
Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg
When the Rail Baltica project started in 2010, it looked to be one of the most transformative train projects Europe has seen this century. An 870-kilometer (540-mile) railway line running at speeds of up to 234 kilometers per hour (145 miles per hour), the new link was supposed to be running services across the Baltic states from Tallinn in Estonia south to the Polish border and beyond by 2026.
Trains this fast along this route are a revolutionary concept. High-speed rail may now be common between major cities in Europe’s heavily built-up west, but it remains rare in northern Europe, and all but unheard of in its sparsely populated Northeast. With Rail Baltica in place, journey times from Tallinn to Warsaw — roughly the same distance as New York City to Detroit — could fall from 22 hours to just seven.