President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has opened a new Beskydsky railway tunnel.
“I am confident that this is a symbol of effective cooperation of Ukraine with the European Union, it is a symbol of increasing revenues to the national budget, it is a symbol of creating new high-paying jobs in Ukraine both in the economy and on the railroad,” Poroshenko said at the ceremony of opening the tunnel in Zakarpattia region.
According to him, this tunnel is part of the international transport 1,500-kilometer corridor Trieste-Ljubljana-Budapest-Bratislava-Uzhgorod-Lviv.
The head of state noted that the tunnel “tightly linked” Lviv region and Zakarpattia region.
The president noted that the construction of the new tunnel was started in 2014 (the old one was built in 1886).
According to him, 60% of the export flow, which is transported by rail, goes through the Beskydsky tunnel.
Poroshenko said that the old tunnel allowed 40-45 pairs of trains a day, while the new tunnel more than 100 at a speed of 60 km/h, which is 20 km/h more than the speed in the old tunnel.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman predicts that the new Beskydsky tunnel will be launched by the end of May.
“The new two-track railway Beskydsky tunnel, which is the largest infrastructure facility of the Ukrainian railways built in the years of independence, will be finally launched by late May, as the government resolution requires,” the press service of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine reported on Tuesday, citing Groysman.
The prime minister paid attention to the fact that the tunnel is an important logistic component of routes for exports of Ukrainian products to the European Union (EU).
“We need to ensure support of exports, so we do not have problems with supplies of products,” he said.
In addition, the prime minister said that issues of providing wagons and increasing the quality of servicing, first of all, in the passenger segment, should be solved quickly.
As reported, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine in March 2018 increased the estimated cost of construction of the Beskydsky railroad tunnel by UAH 737 million, to UAH 2.292 million.
The Beskydsky tunnel was built in 1886 and has already exhausted its operational resource. Trains pass the tunnel with the minimum speed. In addition, the single-track tunnel limited the capacity of the entire international transport corridor.
The new tunnel is to start operating at full on May 25, 2018.
