"To ensure smooth traffic flow and passenger movement, the Rail Baltica railway line at the airport will be elevated on a viaduct," said a release.
Rail Baltica is a project to build a European standard 1,435 mm gauge electrified railway for passenger and freight transport to be built from Tallinn to the Lithuanian-Polish border. The overall length of the railway will be 870 kilometers.
As regards the Rail Baltica station building across from the airport terminal – the contractor, B.S.L. Infra, has completed the construction of the reinforced concrete frame, which now stands three stories high.
"In the future, the station will be connected to the airport by a pedestrian bridge, while the railway line in the direction of Riga and Jaunmārupe will be placed on viaducts. The total length of the viaduct towards Jaunmārupe will be just under 800 meters, while towards Riga, it will stretch for more than one kilometer," said RB Rail.
"The construction work and the contract are divided into several phases, progressing according to the available funding. The active construction zone near the airport is now shifting from the station to the viaducts. This is the second largest phase of the Rail Baltica infrastructure project, covering more than 4.5 kilometers of high-speed railway line," said Ēriks Diļevs, Chairman of the Board of “Eiropas Dzelzceļa līnijas”, the Latvian public company that makes up one third of RB Rail.
The Rail Baltica station has now risen to a height of 20 meters (the total height, including the steel roof structure, will reach about 25 meters). The construction of the railway station and the structurally independent viaduct section required approximately 23,000 m³ of concrete.
The construction of the Rail Baltica station and associated infrastructure near Riga International
Airport is being carried out by the international consortium B.S.L. Infra, which includes Austria's
Swietelsky AG and the Latvian construction companies SIA Binders and AS LNK Industries.
The Latvian Saeima established a parliamentary investigation commission to evaluate the implementation of the Rail Baltica project following a damning report from State Auditors from Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.
According to the latest Rail Baltica cost-benefit analysis, the total cost of the line in the Baltics could reach EUR 23.8 billion, including EUR 15.3 billion for the first phase of the project in the Baltics and EUR 6.4 billion in Latvia. The initial previous cost-benefit analysis in 2017 estimated the total cost of the entire project at EUR 5.8 billion.
