May 31 (SeeNews) - The European Commission's Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA) said on Thursday it has signed a 109 million euro ($127.2 million) grant agreement to co-fund the development of Divaca-Koper railway line in Slovenia.
The funds provided under the CEF Transport programme will support the construction of a new second track along the entire Divaca-Koper railway line in order to improve capacity, safety and reliability of the railway line, as well as to increase the travel speed, INEA said in a statement.
In particular, this project will include works on the construction of seven tunnels, which are key infrastructure components of the line's second track.
After the completion of the project, the travel distance between both cities will be cut from 44.3 to 27 km and the travel speed will increase from 75 to up to 160 km/h, up to 100 km/h for freight trains, INEA pointed out.
The new second track is also expected to significantly increase the capacity of the Divaca-Koper rail line from 90 to approximately 220 trains per day.
The current single-track conventional Divaca-Koper railway line is a bottleneck on the Mediterranean and Baltic-Adriatic core network corridors, hindering freight access to the Port of Koper.
($=0.8572 euro)