The first train of the reopened Vilnius-Riga direct route departed from Vilnius Railway Station on Wednesday morning fully packed.
The route is operated by LTG Link, the passenger arm of Lietuvos Geležinkeliai (Lithuanian Railways, LTG), Lithuania’s state-owned railway company.
Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė and Transport Minister Marius Skuodis also took the first train to the Latvian capital. In Riga, they will meet their Latvian counterparts, Prime Minister Evika Siliņa and Transport Minister Kaspars Briškens.
According to Šimonytė, the Vilnius-Riga train will serve as a complementary means for travelling to the Latvian capital, as rail travel is a “European habit”.
“Many of us have probably tried different ways of travelling between Vilnius and Riga – we flew by plane, drove by car, took the bus. Now these options will be complemented by perhaps the most sustainable way of travelling,” Šimonytė said.
Transport Minister Skuodis said he hopes that in the future this route will be extended to the Estonian capital.
“We will need to extend the train from Riga to Tallinn. We really want to do that and we will need further steps by the three countries,” he said.
Latvia and Estonia are currently negotiating a link between Riga and the Estonian city of Tartu, to which the Vilnius-Riga train timetable could be adapted, the minister added.
According to LTG CEO Egidijus Lazauskas, the reopened route between Vilnius and Riga will be subsidised by the Lithuanian state, while in Latvia it will be operated commercially.
Direct trains to Riga will run daily departing from Vilnius at 6:30. It will take just over four hours to get from Vilnius to Riga by train, similar to a car trip. The train will stop in Lithuania’s Kaišiadorys, Šiauliai, and Joniškis and Latvia’s Jelgava.
A train ticket to Riga costs 24 euros, or 34 euros in a first-class carriage.
In mid-December, LTG Link received a safety certificate from the European Union Agency for Railways for its operations in Latvia, allowing it to carry passengers in the neighbouring country.
Previously, a direct train between Vilnius and Riga ran until January 2004. From September 2018 until March 2020, the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Vilnius and Riga were connected by a Ukrainian railway train running between Kyiv and the Latvian capital. According to LTG, Vilnius and Riga were also occasionally connected by longer train routes from other national carriers.
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