Estonia’s Minister of Economic Affairs and Infrastructure Taavi Aas signed the draft transport and mobility master plan for the next 15 years, aiming to make the transport system more sustainable and safer while also pay more attention to the strategic development of mobility.
According to Minister Aas, such a long-term vision is necessary to achieve green aspirations.
“Although the whole world is in both a health and economic crisis and each country is looking for ways to protect its citizens’ health and support its economy, we must also pay attention to our long-term aspirations, especially in light of last week’s new greener deal,” he underlined. “I hope that the vision of the future created based on meaningful inclusion and empirical research will further increase the demand for new technological solutions that create new and better opportunities for companies and our people.”
In creating the future direction of transport and mobility, the Ministry stemmed from the goal of ensuring convenient, safe, fast, accessible and sustainable mobility opportunities for residents and companies. The main focus of the development plan is to reduce the environmental footprint of transport vehicles and systems to contribute to the achievement of the 2050 climate goals.
The development plan calls for the introduction of low-carbon fuels in all modes of transport and it sets the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in this sector by 23-38 per cent by 2035 compared to 2018.
Mobility, which aims to bring the use of public transport closer to the people and make its use more convenient, faster and more accessible is also a major direction in drawing up the master plan. It is also planned to pay more attention to cycling and walking to increase the share of public transport, cycling or walking workers from 38 per cent to 45-55 per cent through better mobility.
The concept of maritime transport was also created as an appendix to the master plan, as the current Maritime Policy 2014-2020 is also coming to an end. The plan is to make the maritime transport sector more competitive and greener and to integrate it with other infrastructure.