Metro group: Proposed Tallinn light metro could compete with car

Trams are slow, but a metro could compete with travel by car in the city, said Jaan Jagomägi and Kristjan Kaunissaare, two members of a group of people interested in building a light metro system in the Estonian capital.
Last Friday, a group of experts and economists dubbed the metro group went public with the idea of building a two-line light metro system in Tallinn. In an appearance on Raadio 2's "R2 Hommik!" show on Monday, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications (MKM) Rail Baltica coordinator Kristjan Kaunissaare and architect Jaan Jagomägi shed more light on the proposed Tallinn Metro plan.
"These are indeed long processes, plans take time and all of that, but we really are only just getting started," Kaunissaare said. "This is the point where you need to get the idea properly on paper and analyze it."
According to the Rail Baltica coordinator, the light metro project could be introduced to politicians this year, and the Tallinn Metro could be completed by 2030.
"The year 2030 – if we want to get this idea down on paper within 2024 in such a way that it's ready to be introduced to politicians and decisionmakers, then why not?" he added.
"Ülemiste City is expanding at a tremendous rate," Jagomägi said. "And now imagine you want to drive home from work to Põhjala Factory, and that takes 50 minutes. Now think about where else you can reach within 50 minutes from Ülemiste City – by car you could reach Paide."
He noted that Stockholm's urban planners, according to whom the Stockholm and Copenhagen metros were built, have calculated half an hour as the ideal commute time "from door to door – from work to home."
The shape of Tallinn itself, however, doesn't allow for someone to get across town in just half an hour using its existing public transport.

Jagomägi explained that various options exist for building the metro.
"Some metros are built the way the underground parking garage was in Noblessner, for example – the ground is just dug up, the concrete cast is built underneath and that's it," he described.
Kaunissaare said that the metro is a public transport system isolated from other traffic and which can run underground, on the surface or even on elevated tracks. In the case of a light metro, trains would be shorter than typical of regular metro or subway systems.
"If in New York or Berlin you're traveling with 10- to 12-car trains, with a light metro it would be more like three to five cars," he explained, referring to the New York City Subway and Berlin's U-Bahn. "They can use [steel] railroad wheels; they could use rubber tires."
"In Lasnamäe, it's easy – it has the canal; it has the infrastructure," Jagomägi pointed out. "Now, as far as Mustamäe and Õismäe go, another important thing about this project is probably the fact that we will be building a corridor. And parallel bike paths could also be run in this corridor."
Such a solution would make the cityscape more beautiful, he added.
"We could connect around 250,000 Estonian residents within the span of 20 minutes," the metro group member emphasized. "Considering that's maybe one fifth of the entire population of Estonia, this is one of the biggest regional projects imaginable."
Jagomägi explained that trams are slow, averaging, together with stops, a speed of some 20 kilometers per hour. The metro, meanwhile, would run at 45 km/h.
"And now imagine that you'd actually be taking this for an hour – the tram will never compete with a car in the context of Tallinn," he added.
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Editor: Valner Väino, Aili Vahtla