Builders had drilled 290 meters of the new Beskydsky railway tunnel as of June 16, the press service of the State Railway Administration (Ukrzaliznytsia) reports.
Work is being done around the clock. The tunneling speed currently reaches three meters per day because of the quality of the rock.
As reported, builders reached the 198-meter mark on May 12. Thus, they have managed to drill almost 100 meters in one month. The tunnel will have a total length of 1,764 meters.
The new double-track tunnel is being built 30 meters from the existing single-track tunnel that was built during the Austro-Hungarian era in 1886 and has already completed its normal service life.
The Beskydsky tunnel is of strategic importance to Ukraine because goods are transported to the western border of the country through this route and more than 60% of the goods on transit to Western and Central Europe go through the route. The current single-track tunnel is the only single-track section of the fifth Crete International Transport Corridor (Trieste-Ljubljana-Budapest-Bratislava-Uzhgorod-Lvov and further to Russia).
