Riga City Council plans to introduce lanes for public transports. The municipal administration is also actively working on solutions to make sure public transports move around the city with no restrictions, as reported by the city council’s representative Tatjana Smirnova.
She said that to make public transports a convenient, fast and economical form of transport while also reducing the number of private vehicles in the city and overall air pollution, there are efforts underway to restore public transport infrastructure.
Over the course of the past two years a great deal of work has taken place in Riga – more than 50 different road traffic improvements have been adopted, 11 new public transport lanes have been established, 11 public transport priority traffic lights have been installed, as well as other important projects that improve the movement of public transports in the city.
“Public transports are my political priority. This is why we will keep in focus this week – the European Mobility Week,” stresses Riga City Council Chairman Vilnis Ķirsis.
Riga City Council invites residents to leave their personal vehicles home and use public transport services on Friday, the 22nd of September, as they will be free of charge this day. Ķirsis says frequent use of public transports are mostly related to change of habits. Such days let people who normally use their private cars try using public transport services instead.
“To make public transport movements faster, special lanes are in the works in the city. Additional, road signs and new traffic lights are planned to he installed. One of the solutions suggested was the optimisation or re-planning of the route of various stops based on passenger demand,” says the mayor of Riga.
Chairman of Riga City Council Transport Department Olafs Pulks explains that Riga will continue massive municipal public transport infrastructure restoration and reconstruction work in order to modernise the infrastructure, making it more convenient and accessible in order to free up the city from private cars and such.
“We are working to integrate public transports with the railway and create “mobility points”, where residents will be able to leave their cars and use Riga’s public transport services, trains or micro-mobility sharing tools,” says Pulks, adding that to support residents’ choice based on their demand and analysis of various solutions, it is planned to restore the 1st trolleybus route and organise another trolleybus to course on the 7th trolleybus line.
One of the solutions to motivate residents to use public transport services more often is the passenger ticket reform, making regular use of public transports more financially attractive.
Using public transport services with a one-month ticket is more economical than using a private car every day. The price of a one-month ticket for an unlimited number of trips is EUR 30 and various categories of passengers are given discounts. Seniors, students and invalids can use public transport services in Riga free of charge.
Additional information about the groups of people who are eligible to various discounts is available on Rīgas satiksme LLC website.
In the future the municipality plans to develop public transport lanes in the future. However, separate road lanes do not always resolve all road traffic problems.
In order to improve and accelerate the traffic of trams and trolleybuses, the municipality is already carrying out tasks to ensure that the traffic is as free and undisturbed as possible by introducing green waves of traffic lights, as well as performing a left-hand manoeuvrer, leaving the end points and side streets without stopping.
These solutions are already in place in many parts of Riga.
As part of the European Mobility Week, in many parts of Europe a lot of attention is put on public transports. This is why residents and guests to Riga will be able to use public transport services free of charge on Friday, the 22nd of September.
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