“It is a fact that there will be more standard gauge railway tracks in Lithuania. How much more, for us it is the most important thing to discuss with the West. Today, our integration ends at Kaunas Intermodal Terminal and this is a rather slow track that does not have signalling systems yet, which we are going to install in order for more trains to travel,” Minister Skuodis told the news agency ELTA.
“Currently, the entire attention of the Government, of LTG is on developing the standard gauge railway tracks. (&) This is done in an economically substantiated way, including geopolitical reasons. Whereas various suggestions to dismantle [Russian gauge railway tracks] and so on are not serious simply because of the rhetoric chosen,” Skuodis said.
According to the minister, Lithuania will have transformed its railway system, fully integrating it with the West, once the Rail Baltica project is completed and when a high-speed standard gauge track is laid to Klaipėda.
“Now our primary attention is on the standard gauge. Speaking about the rest of the network, certain decisions will have to be made as to how much attention to devote to which network. The point is that these decisions are not about the five-year, not about the ten-year but essentially about the fifty-year period,” said Skuodis.
As reported, following the European Commission’s guidance on transit of sanctioned goods via the EU, suggestions have emerged in the public sphere to dismantle Russian gauge railway tracks so that sanctioned goods could not be transported from Russia via Lithuania to Kaliningrad Oblast.
