Võru Municipality has nearly 650 kilometers of roads, with over €1 million spent annually on upkeep and investments. About one-third of that comes from government funding, and roughly the same amount is spent on winter road maintenance, said Võru Municipal Mayor Kalmer Puusepp.

"Since the budgeted amount is fixed, it cannot be increased or decreased," Puusepp explained. "The amount spent on winter maintenance also plays a big role. During very snowy winters, a lot of money goes to snow removal. When 40 tractors are plowing snow at once in Võru Municipality, that's expensive — and that means less money is left for other maintenance work in the summer. These [factors] are directly linked."

While additional investment funding has recently been found for state roads, municipalities have no such hope for an increase in state funding for road maintenance.

"The government supports the upkeep of local roads with €29.3 million annually, and this amount is then allocated according to the support fund regulation, which is based on the length of highways and streets," explained Julia Bergštein, head of the Roads Division at the Ministry of Climate's Road and Railways Department. "This formula-based support has not changed; it has remained the same each year."

Põlva Municipality has nearly 500 kilometers of roads to maintain, 90 percent of which are gravel roads.

Since the amounts allocated for roads have not changed, the continuous rise in maintenance costs means less maintenance work can be done each year.

"It would be very welcome if some of the money from the car tax went to local roads too," said Põlva Municipal Mayor Martti Rõigas. "Then people living in sparsely populated areas would understand why they pay that car tax. Here in the countryside, there really is no alternative to [owning a] car. No one here is under any illusion that modern public transport befitting current standards of living could ever exist in these parts."

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