October 24 (SeeNews) - Slovenia's capital Ljubljana within two years will choose a project for the upgrade of its railway network estimated to cost between 800 million euro and 4.5 billion euro ($1.1 billion-6.4 billion), a municipal official said.
"[The cost of] the deepening of the railway, which is a very complex project depends on the variant [for upgrade] which will be chosen in two and a half or two years," the head of the municipality's department for urban planning, Miran Grajsek, told SeeNews late on Tuesday on the sidelines of the Investment Conference organised by local daily The Slovenia Times.
Construction is planned to begin in 2010.
"The deepening of the railway may be completed in 10-12 years, it is a very vast project," Grajsek said.
The costs will be covered by the government, EU funds and private sources.
Slovenia, a member of the European Union since May 2004, lies on two of the EU-defined transport corridors - Corridor X that links Austria with Greece via former Yugoslavia, and Corridor V that links Italy with Ukraine.
($ = 0.7038 euro)