Five companies have shown interest in providing rail transport in Latvia / Article

Three bids were submitted by five carriers in the ATD study:

• Existing carrier JSC “Pasažieru vilciens”;
• JSC “Leo Express Global”, which provides passenger transportation by rail in the Czech Republic and Germany;
• association SIA “Latvijas Sabiedriskais autobuss”, “Keolis SA” and “Syntus BV”, which provides transportation in Australia, Great Britain, USA, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

The Directorate has started evaluating the submitted applications and, taking into account the results, it is planned to take a decision on the partial or complete liberalization of the railway transport market in the summer of this year in cooperation with the Ministry of Transport (MoU).

In February of this year, ATD launched a study of the railway transport market with the aim of finding out the interest of a carrier providing passenger transport services by rail in operating in the Latvian railway transport market in accordance with the preconditions for the provision of services in Latvia.

The research of the railway transport market was carried out for the entire segment of domestic passenger transport: for the interest in providing public transport services on both electrified railway lines and non-electrified lines, including lines where services are planned to be provided by battery trains.

Interested service providers were able to submit a tender for the whole volume (electrified and non-electrified lines), only for certain segments (only for electrified or only non-electrified lines) and only for individual railway lines or routes.

It is planned that a decision on partial or full liberalization of the railway market will be made in the summer of this year, according to ATD.

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