Ukraine begins construction of standard gauge European rail link

Wednesday, April 17, 2024

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal attended a ceremony on April 11 marking the start of work to provide a standard gauge track on the 22 km broad gauge route from Chop on the borders with Hungary and Slovakia to the city of Uzhhorod.

‘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 freight transport, and will relieve bottlenecks’, said Shmyhal.

’Uzhhorod is becoming the first regional centre to be connected to Europe by a European-style railway.’

Main works are to begin in May, based on studies developed in 2021-22.

The EU’s Connecting Europe Facility is providing a grant to cover 50% of the 1·3bn hryvnia cost of the 14-month project, which includes the 1 435 mm gauge track, reconstruction of the substructure and installing bidirectional semi-automatic signalling.

Longer term ambitions outside the scope of the current project include electrification, and a possible extension of the 1 435 mm gauge track through to Lviv, linking the city to the Rhine-Danube and Mediterranean TEN-T corridors.

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