Ukrzaliznytsia adapts Ukrainian highways to Europe

Ukrzaliznytsia has started the construction of the Chop - Uzhgorod European track. This project is included in the list of projects of the strategic program for the development of railway infrastructure for the integration of Ukraine into the European Union. Laying of the first link of the rail sleeper grid of the new Eurotrack took place on April 11.

This project will not only increase the comfort of passenger traffic and redistribute the passenger flow, but will also provide us with new logistical opportunities for cargo transportation, and relieve traffic checkpoints. Uzhhorod becomes the first regional center to be connected to Europe by a European-style railway. Ukrzaliznytsia noted that the project will be implemented with 50% grant co-financing from the EU fund Connecting Europe Facility (CEF). The total amount of the project is UAH 1.3 billion.

The term of the project is 14 months. It envisages the construction of 22 km of European-standard railway tracks, the reconstruction of artificial structures, objects and networks of engineering support, and the equipping of the track with two-way semi-automatic blocking and microprocessor dispatching centralization devices. In addition, it is planned to electrify the new 1435 mm European track on the Chop - Uzhhorod section.

Also in the plans is a possible extension of the Eurotrack from Uzhgorod to Lviv, which will be an important step for joining Lviv to two European TEN-T transport corridors — the Rhine-Danube and the Mediterranean.

We will remind you that earlier the Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, Mykola Solsky, emphasized that domestic investors are ready to finance the construction of a wide railway track from the border with Ukraine to the ports of Gdansk in Poland and Klaipeda in Lithuania. This should facilitate the delivery of Ukrainian grain and, by the way, give Poland the opportunity to earn from its transit. After all, if such a road is built to Gdańsk, Ukrainian companies will guarantee the appropriate scale of transportation along this route for 10 years in the future. In fact, this will give Poland the opportunity to build factories for the processing of Ukrainian grain on its own coast and to export ready-made products. As for logistics, there are many times more wagons for transporting grain in Ukraine than in Europe as a whole. That is why it is more logical for Ukrainian businessmen to build a 1,520 mm track from the Ukrainian border to the Polish coast, rather than to buy wagons on the European standard track. In order to implement this project, the approval of the simplified procedure for such investment by the Polish Parliament is currently required. This simplified procedure has already been adopted in Poland for the construction of an oil port or a gas terminal. And currently, without waiting for a new track, Ukraine has already resumed container transportation. On April 3 of this year, the first container ship after the full-scale Russian invasion passed by sea to one of the ports of the Odesa region. The first ship to pass the route was the "T Mare" under the flag of Panama. This is not a full-fledged specialized ship, but a so-called feeder, which makes charter flights between Constanta and the ports of Greater Odessa. Until now, container transportation was carried out in a limited volume through the Danube ports of the Odesa region, but now it is expected that it will increase significantly.