Missing Service
No passenger trains cross the Lithuania โ Latvia border at all, because the former Vilnius (Lithuania) โ Daugavpils (Latvia) service has been cut back to Turmantas, the final station on the Lithuanian side. This leaves Turmantas (population: 286) with 6 daily trains to Vilnius, and Daugavpils (population: 80000, Latviaโs second city), and just 25.2km track distance from Turmantas, with none. Trains and staff to run the service exist already, for the trains wait for hours in Turmantas before returning to Vilnius. At present people take a bus on dirt roads to Zemgale and walk across the border to Turmantas.
What needs to be done: extend services from Turmantas to Daugavpils. The only cost is fuel for the diesel train, as adequate numbers of trains and staff exist for the service already
European Commission Analysis
In 2018 the European Commission published its “Comprehensive analysis of the existing cross-border rail transport connections and missing links on the internal EU borders”. The main report (74 pages, PDF) summarises the issues, and Annex 3 of the report (384 pages, PDF) analysed every single border.
For the sake of simplicity, I have made a PDF just of the relevant pages of Annex 3 that cover Vilnius-Turmantas-Daugavpils – you can find that PDF here.
Photos from this location
