The Minister of the Sea, Tourism, Transport and Development Božidar Kalmeta signed today at Thessaloniki with his colleagues from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia-Montenegro, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Albania, Turkey, the Ukraine and Moldavia a Memorandum on the establishment of a high performance rail network in SE Europe. The signing of the Memorandum took place within a summit of the SE Europe Cooperation Process (SEECP).
This Memorandum expresses the interest of the co-signing countries to contribute, via their national railway development policies, to the improving of the regional railway transport by establishing a high performance rail network. The main goal of the Memorandum is the creating of rail networks for high performance in passenger, freight and intermodal traffic in SE Europe with providing faster, better and more competitive railway connections between capitals and commercial centers.
Other elements which will be considered by all the included parties will be the technical upgrading of the railroad tracks, the modernization of trains and other vehicles using railroad tracks as well as shortening the procedures necessary for passing international borders.
The network would include railroad tracks of 16 railroad corridors, parts of the trans-European network, all-European corridors or SE railroad corridors. Tracks along the corridor directions which pass through the Croatian territory, included by the high performance network of this region, represent parts of the all – European Corridor X, Vb and Vc and they are expected to be modernized in order to achieve the standards defined by the Memorandum.
The Memorandum demands that by the year 2020, along the included corridor railroad tracks it should be possible to achieve a max. commercial speed for passenger trains of 130 km/h along with a min. projected speed of 160/h ( even up to 220 km/h along certain parts of the route). The speed of freight trains would also be adjusted to those designed speeds.
The Memorandum further plans the founding of a Managing Board for controlling the whole situation as well as a Technical Secretariat for the handling of administrative tasks.