Your e-mail eventually reached me - my name is James Pond and I deal with "Rail Baltica" in the Commission's Directorate General for Transport and Energy. Thanks for your interest in the project and your questions which I'll try to answer now.
The current status of this project is that it's only at the preliminary stage. Its origins, as you may know, came from ideas developed at a series of Meetings of European Transport Ministers in the 1990's long before the three Baltic States and Poland joined the EU in May 2004. The plan of developing the existing railway line from Tallinn to Warsaw was taken up by the EU's Transport Group (Van Miert Group) which looked at the extension of the TEN-T projects to the new Member States in Central and Eastern Europe. Finland has been a Partner Country of the project since the beginning but no work is foreseen for the moment in Helsinki and a tunnel is not an option being considered! When and if the lines from Warsaw to Tallinn is upgraded the option might be for improved ferry services for example, though this remains to be seen and in any case would be a decision for the Finnish government. As for your question about the probable operating speed on the line: for the moment a feasibility study is being written by transport consultants to look at all the possible options. This report is due out in November this year and no project decisions will be taken until then. It seems probable that the line would operate at around 120 kph but again this would depend on the findings of the feasibility study.
I hope this answers your questions. More information about the development of the project should be available during the course of the year.
