{"id":388429,"date":"2026-03-17T19:46:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T09:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/?p=70034"},"modified":"2026-03-17T19:46:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T09:46:08","slug":"poland-thinks-rail-baltica-wont-be-ready-before-2040","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=388429","title":{"rendered":"Poland thinks Rail Baltica won\u2019t be ready before 2040"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rail Baltica, the project to link the Baltic states to Poland and the rest of EU by rail, continues to cause controversies. The most recent one concerns the Polish deputy minister of infrastructure saying that the line will not be built by 2030 and we will rather have to wait another 10 years.<\/strong>
\n<\/span>Piotr Malepszak expressed his concerns in an interview with the Financial Times where he pointed out that upgrading existing infrastructure might be a smarter move than building everything from scratch. Malepszak said that meeting the 2030 deadline, set by the European Commission and legally binding, is an impossible feat.<\/p>\n

At the end of last year, Rail Baltica stated that 43% of the project was \u2018construction ready\u2019. Thinking that it is possible to go from that to 100% completion in five years may be a little naive, especially considering that expected costs skyrocketed from 5,8 to almost 24 billion euros. Malepszak argued that adding up the lack of funds paired with growing costs and the complicated technical requirements set by the EU made it impossible to finish the project in time.<\/p>\n

\n

What about freight?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Amid all this chaos, the role of rail freight once Rail Baltica<\/strong> will be available should not be underestimated. RailFreight.com recently had an exclusive interview with Rail Baltica\u2019s CTO Emilien Dang<\/strong>. Dang pointed out that the new line is a historical opportunity to radically change how logistics work in the Baltics<\/strong>, traditionally tied to Russia<\/strong> in terms of business and infrastructure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Estonia\u2019s pessimism and Latvia\u2019s struggles<\/h2>\n

The Polish deputy minister of infrastructure is not the first politician from one of the countries involved raising red flags about Rail Baltica\u2019s schedule. Last year, Estonian MP and Rail Baltica Committee Head Andris Kulbergs shared similar worries, claiming that it would be delayed to 2035<\/a>, especially for the Latvian section. Latvia is in fact struggling<\/a> to secure the funds and already had to significantly downgrade the initiative.<\/p>\n

\"Rail
Rail Baltica construction site in Riga. Image: \u00a9 Shutterstock. Pandora Pictures<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rail Baltica, the project to link the Baltic states to Poland and the rest of EU by rail, continues to cause controversies. The most recent\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[337,343,471,19870,2832,2840,47],"tags":[12634],"class_list":["post-388429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baltics","category-infrastructure","category-news","category-piotr-malepszak","category-poland","category-rail-baltica","category-rail-news","tag-railfreight"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=388429"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":388502,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388429\/revisions\/388502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=388429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=388429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=388429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}