Rail Baltica seeks contractor for building longest railway bridge in the Baltic States

Rail Baltica seeks contractor for building longest railway bridge in the Baltic States

LTG Infra, the company responsible for the implementation of the Rail Baltica project in Lithuania, has launched the second stage of the tender, during which it will select a contractor for the construction of a railway bridge across the Neris River near Jonava. It will be the longest railway bridge in the Baltic States with a length of more than 1.5 km, informs Railway Supply  magazine referring to the Rail Baltica website.

“The railway bridge over the river Neris will be the most technically complex engineering construction of the Rail Baltica railway project. This will be the longest bridge not only in Lithuania but also in all Baltic States. Another engineering challenge is that there will not be single support in the water, and so the selected construction contractor will face a serious challenge in this task,” LTG Infra CEO Karolis Sankovski says.

In total, the new bridge will be 1510 meters long. Currently, the longest bridge in Lithuania crosses the Dubisa River near Liduvenai, reaching a length of 599 meters, and the longest bridge for road traffic crosses the Nemunas River near Jurbarkas and reaches a length of 494 meters.

The maximum span of the bridge between the supports at the place of its crossing over the river will be 150 meters.

Based on the contract, the contractor winning the tender will have to not only construct the bridge but also perform landscape modifications, install noise suppressing barriers, reconstruct nearby water delivery and other engineering networks, and reconstruct drainage systems.

The new bridge will become part of a completely new 1435 mm railway section for Rail Baltica between Kaunas and the Lithuanian-Latvian border.

Rail Baltica is the largest railway infrastructure project in the Baltic States’ history. Through its implementation, across the entire length of the Rail Baltica route, an electrified European standard gauge two-way railway line will be laid down, spanning from Warsaw through Kaunas to Riga and Tallinn.

The total length of the Rail Baltica railway line in the Baltic States will reach 870 km: 392 km in Lithuania, 265 km in Latvia and 213 km in Estonia.

The project’s constructions, which are planned to be valued at around 5.8 billion euros, are the largest investment aimed at improving mobility and travel opportunities, developing business, tourism, and goods exchanges in the region.

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