Estonia, Good for Business, Legislation, Society, Transport

"We had a general meeting yesterday and it was decided there that we will make a proposal to the Road Administration for transferring to free transport," Tonis Piir, member of the management board of the Tartu County Public Transport Center, told BNS.

Piir said that the negative sides of implementing zero price transport were also discussed at the meeting and it was concluded that free transport should nevertheless be introduced. "There were a lot of doubts and hesitations here that were discussed beforehand, starting from how consistent this project is and for how long the free transport will stay," he said.

"The positive side would be that the rural municipalities would directly benefit from students riding for free and the rural municipality could use the money freed from there elsewhere, even for the development of the rural municipality," Piir said.

He said that free transport on county bus lines will not affect commercial lines as there are very few of those in Tartu County.

Minister of Economic Affairs and Infrastructure Kadri Simson at the end of April signed a ticket price regulation that from July will enable to ask for ticket prices at the existing rate on county bus lines but also offer free public transport . If the local public transport centers do now lower ticket prices of the county bus traffic from July, for example reducing them to a free ride, they will partly miss out on the additional funding meant to be allocated for county public transport from the state budget.

So far, the Southeastern Public Transport Center organizing the public transport of Voru and Polva counties, Laane County, Jogeva County, as well as the municipality of Saaremaa have decided to implement free public transport. Harju County, Rapla County and West-Viru County have turned down the possibility to introduce free public transport.