Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Good for Business, Investments, Latvia, Transport

In the course of the project, various roadside intelligent technology solutions (ITS) for traffic management, monitoring and notifying road users will be built on the Estonian-Latvian sections of the Tallinn-Tartu-Luhamaa-Riga route in 2020-2022, the Estonian Road Administration said. 

The Tallinn-Tartu-Voru-Luhamaa road E263 and the Riga-Pskov road E77 are roads of the European TEN-T transport network, which connect Estonia and Latvia and head towards Pskov.

"The dynamic traffic management and road user notification to be established with the project will provide the necessary flexibility for 2+2 road sections to allow speed limits appropriate to weather and traffic conditions and will allow higher speeds of up to 110 kilometers per hour in good driving conditions in winter, resulting in significant driving time savings," Kristjan Duubas, ITS development manager at the design requirements and traffic management development unit of the Estonian Road Administration, said in a press release.

Traffic signs with changing information will ensure that road users are informed of dangerous situations and obstacles to traffic. These signs will be clearly visible to all road users and help the road owner to communicate with road users in the safest way, giving them the information they need in a timely manner and in the right place.

The solutions of Estonia and Latvia are not identical, but both countries based their choices on the fact that the technologies used are cross-border and compatible with each other. The authorities are also working together to create a proactive cross-border traffic management plan to ensure that international traffic is as smooth as possible, even in difficult circumstances.

"With intelligent traffic management solutions, driving time is reduced by 0.8 percent on the entire route and by 5.6 percent on 2+2 road sections," Duubas said. "Together with the new and the 2+2 road section to be built between Kose and Mao, the possibility to regulate traffic with changing information signs from Tallinn to Mao will be added by 2022," he added.

The work in Estonia will start with the preparation of a preliminary design of ITS solutions, which will last five months. The preliminary design will be prepared for the Road Administration by Trafiction OU in cooperation with Reaalprojekt OU.

The project is funded by the European Union through the Interreg Central Baltic Program, with which a financing agreement was signed on July 1. The project will run until November 2022. The European Union is covering 81% of the project cost.