Baltic States – CIS, Good for Business, Lithuania, Railways, Transport

Photo: sumin.lt

In June-August 2010, 21,500 passengers went between Vilnius and Minsk by train. The traffic grew to 40,900 in the summer of 2011.

Passengers tend to choose trains more often because the travel time from Vilnius to Minsk by train shortened from 3 hours 51 minutes to 3 hours as of June 1. This has been reached in the result of close cooperation between Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai (Lithuanian Railways) and Belarusian Railways.

The two countries applied organisational and technical measures to carry out the project of high speed trains between Vilnius and Minsk.

In the nearest future, electrification of the railway section between Naujoji Vilnia and Molodechno is planned. At present, a draft project of the electrification of this section is under preparation.

Electric double-decker trains between Vilnius and Minsk are expected to be launched in 2015 to reduce the travel time to 2 hours.

After the implementation of the project on the line Molodechno (Belarus)-Kena-Naujoji Vilnia, the entire railway section from Kaunas to Minsk will be electrified. The total value of these works on the Lithuanian territory is estimated to be about LTL 76 million (EUR 22 million).