The Baltic States will procure up to 20 regional trains for the Rail Baltica railway, ERR reports. Estonia will buy 5-7 trains, Latvia up to 5 trains, and Lithuania up to 8 trains, which will operate on domestic routes only, at least initially. The trains will have around 200 seats and will run at maximum speeds of around 200 kmph. The tender deadline for the joint procurement has been extended until the middle of June 2026. Estonia’s state-owned passenger train operator, Elron, expects the first regional trains to be delivered in the second half of 2029 and to begin operations at the end of 2030.
In the meantime, the construction of the Rail Baltica railway in Latvia has been delayed, mostly due to funding issues. Latvia is therefore likely to lose around EUR 50mn of EU funds already allocated for the project, LTV reported. While the Ministry of Transport has sought to reduce the costs of the project, Ojars Daugavietis, CFO of the project’s central coordinator, RB Rail, noted that costs would most likely rise even further. Meanwhile, Latvia’s new government plans to draw up a new model to manage the project, with closer coordination on the prime ministerial level, LSM and LETA reported.