New Big Railway Investments in Estonia Not Planned

The Estonian state is not planning new big investments into the local railway traffic till 2020, instead the focus will be on better coordination of different means of transport.

"Railway investments have largely been made. All new trains will come into routes next year, all waiting platforms will be renovated and the majority of the railways enable travelling at the speed of 120 km/h," said economy and communications ministry transport development department head Toomas Haidak said. The Estonian railways system has seen extensive renovations and investments in the past couple of years, culminating in the introduction of a completely new passenger train fleet.

Haidak said that the new transport development plan that is under discussion in the ministry now prescribes mainly raising speed on railways in the secretions where 120 km/h is not possible yet. In some places bypasses would have to be built to make train schedules busier in the future.

"Since at some point, the busier train schedules may start affecting cargo transport, then capacity may have to be increased in the Paldiski direction," he said.

Thus, instead of further investments in railways, the state aims to better link different ways of transport and information and ticket systems. Via faster connections and better coordination of transport it should be possible to reach Tallinn from any county centre in around 3 hours in the future, Haidak said.

Haidak pointed out about the 2014-2020 development plan also the aims of reducing traffic deaths to below 50 a year and raising road quality on smaller roads.

Baltic Course