EU considering new rails Berlin-Tallinn rail link

Proposals for a rail tunnel running beneath the Gulf of Finland between Helsinki and Tallinn could be revived thanks to major European rail plans, Helsingin Sanomat said. The European Union is considering the construction of an upgraded rail connection from Berlin, via Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia to the Estonian capital, and a possible Gulf of Finland tunnel could extend the project to Helsinki, and possibly from there to St. Petersburg.

“If the Rail Baltica project is implemented, the Tallinn-Helsinki rail connection will be put in a completely new light”, says Helsinki Deputy Mayor Pekka Sauri (Green).

“The greatest possible benefit would be if a St. Petersburg - Berlin rail connection were to be implemented, and if Helsinki were genuinely a part of it. This is a possibility that has not yet been considered”, says Mayor Jussi Pajunen (Nat. Coalition Party).

About 80 per cent of freight traffic leaving Finland now goes by sea. A train connection from Europe would change the situation. “The trend in the EU is to move more goods traffic onto the rails”, Sauri says.

Both the Rail Baltica project and the Helsinki-Tallinn tunnel are still in the preliminary stages.

“A Japanese television crew called in the spring, and would have liked to take shots of the mouth of the tunnel”, Sauri laughs. “I said that they still need to what a while.”

Last week Jussi Pajunen visited Tallinn to meet with his colleague Edgar Savisaar to discuss the possibility of applying for EU funding for a feasibility study for the tunnel. The application papers are ready, and Pajunen says that they will go to Brussels in September.

The aim of the study is to assess the price of the possible tunnel, and its usefulness, where the money for the construction would come from, and how it would affect life on both sides of the Gulf of Finland.

The study on the feasibility of a Helsinki-Tallinn tunnel would cost about half a million euros. The cities of Helsinki and Tallinn would each pay EUR 100,000 of the sum, and it is hoped that the EU’s Interreg programme will come up with the rest of it.

“If the tunnel were to carry goods alone, it would cost about a billion euros, or approximately the same as the westward extension of the Helsinki Metro. If the tunnel were to have passenger traffic, the sum would be significantly higher”, Pajunen estimates.

Decisions on EU funding for the feasibility study are expected at about the end of the year.

Pajunen says that if the tunnel is built, it might be in use in 2020-2023 at the earliest.

Sauri says that the Rail Baltica project is now under consideration in the European Commission.

Even if the vision of Helsinki as a along the route of a railway between St. Petersburg and Berlin does not come true, Pajunen still likes the idea of linking the Finnish and Estonian capitals by a rail tunnel.

“The biggest threshold to the implementation is the economic equation. How can the tunnel be built as cheaply as possible, and where would the users be found - the ones who will ultimately pay for the tunnel?”

Source: Transportweekly