Tartu abandons plan to subsidise early bus to Riga

Tartu has abandoned plans to subsidise an early-morning bus service to Riga because of budget pressures, ERR reported. The first bus currently leaves the university city for Riga at 11:10 a.m.

At the end of last year, Tartu said it was prepared to temporarily use taxpayer money to support an early departure on the route. The planned subsidy was estimated at about 30,000 euros a year.

The city had planned to find an operator through a public competition under the rules for de minimis state aid. Tartu city secretary Jüri Mölder said the decision had now been made not to open the scheme.

“This has been caused by changes in the economic environment around us, which force us to take a broader look at the situation. It has also been caused by the city’s lower budget revenues, meaning that we have to assess more carefully how we use the city’s money,” Mölder said.

As of December, two companies had expressed interest in operating the subsidised route: A-buss and Lux Express. Lux Express had previously offered an early-morning departure from Tartu to Riga on a commercial basis.

Lux Express currently operates two daily services between Tartu and Riga. The company’s chief executive, Ingmar Roos, said it would not add an early-morning commercial departure to Latvia this season because demand between Tartu and Riga was too low.

“From January to May, the better-used existing departures had an average of 20 passengers between Tartu and Riga, while the weaker departures had fewer than 10. During the tourism season from June to August, the number of passengers approached 30 a day, but it fell again at the beginning of September,” Roos said.

He said an average of 20 passengers between Tartu and Riga was still about 30 percent below the level needed for a bus company operating solely on ticket revenue to run the route.

Roos added that the existing departures were made more viable by extending them to Narva. “The key is the additional passengers from Narva and Tartu who travel to Riga,” he said. However, he said it would not be possible to build a service that combined Narva and Riga with a departure from Tartu at around 8 a.m.

Rail operator Elron plans to add a morning train alongside the current evening Tartu to Riga service in the first half of next year. Communications manager Kristo Mäe said Elron could introduce a morning Tallinn to Tartu to Riga train after new Škoda electric trains begin operating between Tallinn and Tartu.

“We currently have information from infrastructure owner Eesti Raudtee that we can begin operating the Tallinn to Tartu route with Škoda electric trains in January. After that, we will be able to give the exact timetable. It certainly will not happen from January 1,” Mäe said.

Elron currently operates one evening train from Tartu to Riga each day, returning in the morning. According to eight-month statistics, passengers travelled by train between Estonia and Latvia or Lithuania more than 29,000 times, including nearly 12,000 journeys on the direct train.