The breakthrough of the new 1.8km double-track Beskyd railway tunnel happened on the  21.01.2016. This tunnel is located in the Carpathian Mountains, in south-west Ukraine. The new tunnel with an excavation cross section of up to 120 m², replaces the existing single track tunnel built in the 1886. It is the only single track section of line the rest is twin track and runs between Lviv in Western Ukraine  and Chop near the borders of Hungary and the Slovak Republic. The old Beskyd tunnel will remain in place for emergencies after the commissioning of the new tunnel. As a result of this, three cross-passages will be built between the old and new tunnels. The structure will be seismically stable and 1,765 m long, 10.5 m high and 8.5 m high. 

The Beskyd tunnel is being built by the Ukrainian Company Interbudmontazh and the Austrian PORR. It is financed by European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) at a cost of EUR36 million to them and by European Investment Bank (EIB) at a cost of EUR55 million.

The tunnel is scheduled for completion at the end of 2017 and will begin operation at the beginning of 2018. It will remove a major bottleneck in the European transport corridor that links Ukraine with the European Union. Its traffic capacity will increase from 47 trains per day to 100 and train speeds will rise from 15-40 km/h  to 60-70 km/h significantly reducing journey times between Lviv and Chop. Click here and ua/13 for tunnelbuilder archive. Visit http://www.ebrd.com/news/2016/major-breakthrough-in-beskyd-tunnel-construction.html. 04/16.