Several foreign companies interested in developing Vilnius metro, say supporters

A digital concept of a Vilnius metro station
Organizatorių archyvas

Juozas Zykus, the chairman of the Metro Movement’s council, “there are two Chinese companies (one shared by the Chinese and Europeans), a French firm, Germany’s Siemens, and a Spanish company.” At the Seimas meeting on Monday where he spoke, he also said that Turkish and Italian companies expressed interest in creating a metro system.

Though a Metropolitan Concession Law proposed by the Metro Movement failed to pass the Seimas in 2014, the idea’s supporters still believe that such a project would be a boon for Lithuania, bringing in €43 million a year and creating 10,000 jobs.

Preliminary calculations suggest that such a metro would cost roughly €1.2 billion. Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius has said that the only way such a project could be realised would be with European Union financing, since the city of Vilnius is already heavily in debt.

The idea’s supporters imagine that Vilnius would have two lines that cross along with a ring-shaped line. These would include a Viršuliškės-Cathedral line, a Šeškinė-Railroad station line, and a Justiniškės-Antakalnis line. The metro network would have a total length of 40 km and would take between 20 and 30 years to build.

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