The government has included a major upgrade of Ljubljana’s railways infrastructure – which is part of the Ljubljana Passenger Terminal project – in the plan of development programmes for 2020-2023, which means it is entitled to state funding.
The upgrade of the Ljubljana train station entails the renovation of railway tracks, railway track systems and platform infrastructure, as well as the construction of access areas as part of Ljubljana’s railway hub.This first stage is estimated at almost EUR 109.9 million, the government said in a release after its session on Wednesday.
It will be funded from the national budget and EU grants, with the European Commission having already approved the grant from the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF).
Once the Ljubljana train station is overhauled to increase passenger and cargo traffic capacity, all the other Ljubljana train stations will be modernised.
This should cost an additional EUR 546.5 million, to be funded from the national budget and EU funds – either CEF or the Cohesion Fund, the government said.
The Ljubljana train station, built in 1849 as part of the Austrian Empire’s railway connecting Vienna and Trieste, is now a bottleneck.
Tracks, platforms, signalisation and telecommunications are in great need of a thorough upgrade to provide for modern railways transport.
Transport is expected to further grow in the area of Ljubljana railway hub, especially as the country is seeking to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The government expects that once this infrastructure is modernised it should result in an modern multimodal hub enabling better integrated public passenger transport.
The upgrade of Ljubljana’s railway infrastructure is part of the public segment of the Ljubljana Passenger Terminal, which has been planned for more than a decade.
While its investor is the Slovenian Infrastructure Agency, the public segment also envisages national rail operator Slovenske Železnice building a new bus station and a parking garage.
The private segment meanwhile entails a commercial segment – an office building and a shopping centre – which will be funded by Mendota Invest, a company tied to Hungary’s OTP bank.
The newspaper Dnevnik has recently reported that construction work could begin in 2023, while the completion date is sometime in the middle of the 2020s.