This week, Tallinn city government approved a ten-year contract with TLT, pledging the municipal company €1.2-1.4 billion for the capital's public transport needs over the coming decade. Truly a mammoth contract. Was it ever in doubt that TLT would secure it?

We approached the process like any company would. You always want more say in matters as a board member, while the city – politicians and officials – would like to keep hold of the reins themselves. It might seem funny – after all, you're talking to a representative of the owner (Tallinn owns 100 percent of TLT – ed.) –but we spent around nine months on serious negotiations.

The contract ensures a quality framework, future plans, investment components and everything else you need, including how financing and principal activity will happen, if only in terms of line volume. I'm sure the city would like to add 10 percent to the latter tomorrow. We told them to hold their horses, as it depends on long-term fleet investments – a single tender for new buses might take 18 months.

But it definitely is among the largest contracts in the history of Estonia.

Is it big enough to meaningfully increase the number of public transport users in Tallinn?

It is. There are a lot of interconnected elements. One such aspect, which is widely discussed, is changes to the lines network. We were asked for feedback toward the start of the year, and we provided feedback in terms of the routes we believe are optimal.

Then there's having a high-quality fleet. We're living in crazy times from where TLT is standing – we were in a race against time not to waste support from the Environmental Investments Center, which is how we got our first 15 electric buses. We're taking delivery of our new trams as we speak, with eight arrivals as of this morning. We'll have a total of 23. We are also in the process of procuring new natural gas buses, and social transport vehicles. The Old Harbor tram line is also close to being completed. These things will affect life in Tallinn for the next decade, the next 30 even in the case of trams.

The contract amounts to around €100 million each year, but is it right that investments will be on top of that?

Yes, we have agreed on investment principles, how funding will be ensured, how much of it will be loans and how much TLT will invest itself – we also generate modest own revenue. We negotiated all of these principles.

Deputy Mayor Kristjan Järvan (Isamaa), who has been meeting with representatives of private bus operators, said this week that the TLT contract in question will help open the market to the private sector. What does that mean for TLT – will a part of Tallinn's bus lines be put up for auction and move into private hands?

That's the question. We are in the process of putting together a legal analysis we want to present to TLT's supervisory board. The question is whether the city will put some lines up for auction or whether they'll be outsourced. But who will ensure quality, the price of terminuses, where will bus drivers spend their free time or where to send complaints and who will process them? The mechanism involved is bigger than it may seem – we receive around 250 complaints each month.

As concerns what the deputy mayor said, we were motivated at TLT in light of the fact we've managed to keep the price per kilometer fixed for the last three years. We need to be as good as any private company out there.

But what the deputy mayor proposed is possible. We could hand some lines over to the private sector. It is up to the city government to decide how this would work. We are making preparations today, but whether it will happen or not is a political decision. Current city leaders, as well as the previous city government, have said they're satisfied with our service. If our contract states that we need to ensure service on a particular line 99.7 percent of the time, our number for last month was 99.97 percent.

Mayor Jevgeni Ossinovski (SDE) said that right now around a third of Tallinners use public transport to reach their destination, and that it should be nearer to 50 percent. Have you figured out how to get there?

The things we look at are not quite what the mayor was commenting on. From where we're standing, we cater to around 380,000 passengers in a single day. Tallinn is a city of 460,000 people. Our goal – in cooperation with the city – is to get to half a million daily contacts. I cannot tell you whether that will happen tomorrow, next year or the one after that. But we want our fleet, investments, route changes and new trams to contribute to that goal.

Another thing is that public transport lanes must become faster. That is where it starts. The fleet needs to be of high quality, at the right stop at the right time, instead of rushing ahead of schedule, and clean. The habit of using public transport will follow. We see it, especially in the case of white-collar commuters in the city center. There are problems with parking [that contribute], but the number of young people who make more than the average salary and who take public transport is growing. We need to keep nudging them in the right direction.

The mayor also said that public transport needs to become faster. What does your data say – what are the speeds, how to make things faster and how many buses, trolleys and trams fall behind schedule because of rush-hour traffic?

The biggest "crime" for us, and something we tell our people all the time, is that it all starts with getting ahead of schedule (leaving the stop too soon – ed.). This happens in 0.4-0.5 percent of cases. It seems like a trifling percentage, but we're talking about thousands of trips. We are trying to understand why this happens, analyzing buses and drivers.

We have compared the situation to other cities in Europe – while falling behind schedule is usually caused by roadworks, Tallinn is definitely among the top performers in Europe [in terms of sticking to the schedule]. The state of public transport is not bad at all, we're just very critical of ourselves. For example, our price per kilometer is 30 percent cheaper than it is in Riga.

When the mayor says he wants to make public transport faster, I suppose there is little you can do about it, as the traffic situation is what it is.

We see [the solution in] public transport lanes and better planning. When I get on at the Kristiine intersection to go meet politicians in the Freedom Square, it's not pretty what's happening in the bus lane. One plan is to experiment with [onboard] cameras – this requires a legal amendment on the national level, in terms of whether images can be used to issue warnings etc.

I believe that we will eventually come to a point where public transport lanes are reserved for public transport. People just driving wherever they like is not something you see in other European cities.

We must also admit that public transport speeds have fallen a little in recent years. But we really have had a lot of roadworks in the city center area.

This week saw another round of major changes to Tallinn's bus lines. The so-called second stage of Tallinn's public transport reform. In your opinion, will these changes cause public transport to better meet Tallinners' needs?

We're not politicians or engineers, but we do have a lot of driver experience – we have 1,500 drivers – and our own planners. That said, we believe [in the reform]. We also had faith during the first phase, even though half of it [route changes] didn't even happen.

Perhaps politicians and other decision-makers could be a little bolder – efforts should continue. Of course, the next stage will be interesting, as we'll get transfer hubs and all those things. But it needs to be seen through – we've only completed two stages out of five.

It's too soon to evaluate phase two today. Our experts say it will take around two months. The moment of truth will arrive next week (with the end of the school holidays – ed.).

It has been a bit of a mess – there was no information about the new lines in one location, while one bus stop was in the wrong place. But our preparations were better than last year. We filmed the new routes and shared them with the drivers. Buses have not missed stops, and it is rather a case of people not being used to the new lines yet, which is why they're seeing fewer passengers. We'll have to wait and see.

It has been suggested that instead of reworking lines, more frequent departures are needed. What's your take?

I'll give an example based on the old lines network. We used to have 73 bus lines, but it's down to 70 now. I don't have recent data, as it will take another month, but of those 73 lines, just 14 transported 50 percent of all passengers, which amounted to 133 million passengers last year. The entire lines network is moving toward cross-city lines.

TLT vehicles drive 36.8 million kilometers each year. It really is a lot. We need to move buses to where they're needed, look at timetables and every other aspect, instead of having more buses. Over the last ten years, the volume of lines has grown by 32 percent in Tallinn. It is a colossal figure – if you subtract 32 percent from 36.8 million kilometers. We do not need to add vehicles. We need to move them around and make sure we move as many people as we can. Because the line network will never make everyone happy. That would require a taxi service.

What does your data say about overcrowding in buses? How many lines are overburdened?

There is quite a bit of that. But there are also opposite examples. For example, looking at the airport, where the Ülemiste tram disappeared and the number 15 bus was given a very specific route. We replaced ordinary buses with articulated ones and added two more vehicles to move everyone. We are constantly monitoring things – there are times when ordinary buses see heavy use, while their articulated counterparts step up at others. Our planners are never idle, and there isn't a month when we don't rework some aspects.

Let's move on to trolleybuses. Starting next week, trolleybuses will disappear for about a year, which is when Tallinn is set to take delivery of new ones. Will we be riding in new trolleybuses next winter?

I would start by saying that I'm glad around 70 people (trolleybus drivers – ed.) decided to stay with us and retrain. Forty-four people opted to be laid off.

All major trolleybus manufacturers have asked us for more detailed information, so we hope there will be bids. We expect the bids in early November, and we're making preparations for removing old contact lines after the trolleybuses wrap up on November 1. There will be new infrastructure and less cable pollution in the city center area.

We hope that we'll have the new trolleybuses in the final quarter of next year. We have a rough idea of possible delivery schedules.

What's different and why our employees had to retrain is that while the old trolleybuses were in the railroad registry filed under tracked transport, the new ones will be registered with the Transport Administration as buses or trolleybuses, as they can go 20 kilometers between charges. That is why we had collective layoffs, and need to retrain our drivers and help them get certified as bus drivers.

Are the existing trolleybuses really too tired to make it through another winter?

It's possible they would have made it through, but it was a very pragmatic decision, and I'm glad the politicians listened to us. Trolleybus service would have been suspended for a period of around seven months anyway during work to replace substations, posts and overhead cables. It's better to ground trolleybuses now and have the new trolleys use the new infrastructure right away.

Would the existing fleet have made it – quite likely. But we have 32 trolleybuses out there every day, and 12 of them were replaced by buses on Friday. Some of those trolleybuses really are in a bad way. We can't have passengers fearing they'll get wet when grabbing a vacant seat because the trolleybuses' frames have had it etc. If a trolleybus is meant to last for 15 years, some of ours have been out there for 18-22 years...

There is different information out there about the natural gas Tallinn's buses run on. I was told a few months ago that half of Tallinn's gas buses use natural gas and only the other half biogas. What is the real situation?

That's fake news. We have encouraged our partner to produce more biomethane. There are eight years left in the contract. Last month it was around 80 percent biomethane and the deal is to reach 100 percent in the first quarter of next year. We want all of the gas produced in Estonia and to be free of foreign influence.

We have 350 gas buses and are waiting on another 30 to gradually take older diesel buses out of service.

How many diesel buses does TLT still run?

The number 192. We'll need to replace them in the next four to five years, likely with electric and natural gas-powered alternatives. Public transport is not cheap, and investments are made for 10-30 years.

While still having 192 diesel buses is a lot, our bus fleet totals 557 vehicles. We could write off 15 diesel buses, as we have the electric buses to replace them with, but we will keep them around until we see how the electric buses perform in the winter. We have some experience from Europe, including from Norway, on how an electric bus behaves when it's cold. That was the reason we didn't get more electrical buses with the first tender. It's an expensive experiment, but we need to ensure service in any weather and in any crisis.

You're about to launch a completely new tram line. Why wait until next year, as the tracks seem to be there already?

You'll have to ask [the contractor] Merko Ehitus when they'll be able to secure authorization for use. We have run our tests, and they did necessitate some changes. But it's not out of the question that Merko will give us a Christmas present and allow us to launch the Old Harbor tram line this year.

Finally, let us take a look further into the future. The Liivalaia tram line should be completed by 2029, meaning that you'll soon have to call another tender for new trams.

We are already talking about new procurements. The Pelgulinna-Liivalaia line would require eight new trams. Unfortunately, trams are not getting cheaper, and it could take up to three years to get our hands on them. You're right in pointing out that we'll have to order the new trams in the near future.

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