Rail Baltica seeks design services for Kaunas Urban Node line construction

Credit: Rail Baltica

A new public tender has been announced by RB Rail AS for the master design, detailed technical design, and design supervision (author supervision) services for the construction of the new Rail Baltica line through the Kaunas Urban Node. The contract with the design service provider will be signed jointly by RB Rail AS and LTG Infra. All interested suppliers can submit their applications by 16 January 2023.

Irmantas Butkauskas, Head of Lithuanian branch at RB Rail AS, said: “Kaunas Urban will have an essential role in the Rail Baltica railway line. It is one of the most important transport hub’s both in Lithuania and the whole Baltic region as this is where routes between Northern, Western and Central Europe will meet. It is therefore important that the infrastructure solutions guarantee basis for smooth connectivity and efficient use of the Rail Baltica corridor.”

Dovydas Palaima, General Manager at LTG Infra Rail Baltica Management, added: “While implementing Rail Baltica project we are following the tactic to prepare for the next phase of the project in advance. Spatial planning on Kaunas Urban Node is underway. The announcement of the procurement of design services will provide an opportunity to move to the next phase of the project implementation as smoothly as possible once the special plan will be approved.”

The Rail Baltica Kaunas Urban Node

The Rail Baltica Kaunas Urban Node consists of approximately 83km of high-speed railway mainline and approximately 27km of combined railway track length of railway infrastructure facilities and freight yard. It also includes 10 road structures, such as bridges, viaducts, culverts, wildlife crossings, and other necessary infrastructure elements. Infrastructure components, railway operation parameters and quantities provided are at this stage preliminary and more detailed information will be provided during the second stage of this procurement.

Trains on the Rail Baltica railway line are expected to travel up to 249km/h. The aim is to remove the present missing link of EU track gauge connection between the Baltic states with the rest of the North Sea–Baltic core network corridor and significantly increase the connections between the main cities along the corridor, efficient synergies with the existing rail network in the Baltics and ensure multimodal connections to roads, ports and airports. 

Currently more than 640km of Rail Baltica main line in the Baltic states are being designed and this procurement is another major step forward to implementing the design the whole 870km line in the Baltics. The Kaunas–Vilnius section and route from Jiesia (Kaunas) to the Lithuania border with Poland design procurements have been already launched.