Longest Bridge in the Baltics Will Be Built in Lithuania

In Lithuania, the construction of the longest railway bridge in the Baltic region is underway. This year, construction began on the oldest section of the railway line, stretching from Kaunas to the Latvian border.

Rail Baltica reported this.

The bridge over the Neris River near the town of Jonava will become not only the longest in Lithuania but also in the entire Baltic region, with a length of almost 1510 meters.

"The bridge over the Neris River is one of the most complex objects of the Rail Baltica project and a highly challenging engineering structure. Daily, intensive pile installation work is taking place at the bridge site. To expedite the construction, additional equipment necessary for pile installation is planned to be used in the near future," says Vitas Tilinskas, the head of the Rail Baltica project implementation department.

The construction work is being carried out by the Italian company Rizzani de Eccher.

After drilling the pile installation locations, a metal reinforcement frame is first installed, followed by concrete pouring. In total, the bridge is designed with 376 piles. The diameter of the piles is mainly 1.5 meters, but there are also 1.8-meter piles. The longest piles will reach 33 meters," Tilinskas adds.

Rail Baltica is the largest railway infrastructure project in the history of the Baltic countries. It involves the construction of an electrified, double-track high-speed railway of European standards connecting Warsaw, Kaunas, Vilnius, Panevezys, Riga, Parnu, and Tallinn. The total length of the Rail Baltica line is 392 kilometers in Lithuania, 265 kilometers in Latvia, and 213 kilometers in Estonia.

The bridge will pass through a European ecological network zone, so to avoid any impact on biodiversity, construction work in the river's protective zone will not be conducted during fish migration and spawning seasons. When designing the bridge, invasive solutions in the riverbed were abandoned, and the bridge supports will not be built in the water, maintaining a distance of up to 150 meters above the river. This will allow fish to migrate freely, and aquatic vegetation to grow.

The planned maximum transport speed is 249 km/h for passenger trains and 120 km/h for freight trains. The project's estimated cost is 5.8 billion euros, with up to 85% of the funding coming from the EU.

As noted by the National Institute for Strategic Studies, the Ukrainian railway transport has a significant interest in this project as it provides access to powerful ports in Tallinn and Riga, which can serve as gateways for the export of Ukrainian goods to the global market. The utilization of the port potential in Klaipeda also holds substantial prospects, even though it is not directly part of the "Rail Baltica" project.