TALLINN, 16 October 2025 – According to the National Audit Office, the organisation of county public transport should be more clearly based on people’s actual mobility needs, taking into account both existing and potential users. The timetables of different types of public transport need to be better linked and integrated with other ways of getting about. The Ministry of Regional Affairs and Agriculture should set standards for service levels and a baseline for when the travel needs of people should be covered by county bus services.
Although the national goal has been to increase the number of people using public transport, the use of public transport by commuters has been declining over the past decade, while costs have been rising rapidly. The audit “County Public Transport” published in 2021 showed that despite the introduction of free travel on county bus routes in the period 2019–2024, the share of commuters using public transport among all commuters has not increased.
The situation has not improved to date and less than a fifth of the working-age population use public transport to get to work and back home. At the same time, support for public transport from the state budget has been increasing constantly. Support for county bus transport has increased the most compared to 2019. The support given to county bus transport from the state budget amounted to €43.6 million in 2019 and to €72 million last year. Forecasts by the Ministry of Regional Affairs and Agriculture show that in 2029, the organisation of county bus transport will cost the state €87.1 million.
The audit showed that whilst public transport costs are rising sharply, the Ministry of Regional Affairs and Agriculture has not determined what public transport services the state is willing and able to maintain and finance.
The ministry has not established the principles for optimising the route network, nor has it assessed the cost threshold above which the reorganisation of the route network should start, the cases in which people should be offered alternative transport options such as on-demand transport, or when routes should be closed altogether due to excessive costs.
The Ministry of Regional Affairs and Agriculture finds that the main way to reduce the large gap between the revenues and costs of public transport is to reduce the number of routes, i.e. to shorten routes, reduce frequencies and close routes, or raise ticket prices. According to the financing plan developed by the Ministry, the revenue from tickets should cover 25% of all public transport costs on average in 2025 and the share should increase to 28% by 2030.
At the same time, the audit showed that the practical options for increasing ticket revenue tend to be limited: only 30% of all passengers currently pay for a ticket. Passengers who travel for free are socially vulnerable groups such as disabled people, pensioners and young people. In order to cover 25% of the costs of county bus routes by the ticket price, the price would have to be increased by approximately three times, assuming that the number of passengers and the level of concessions remain the same. On the other hand, even a modest increase in ticket prices tends to reduce the use of public transport.
In order to get more people to use public transport, the needs of those who do not yet use public transport need to be studied as well, and more convenient ways of transferring to public transport, such as light traffic paths, ‘park and ride’ car parks near stations, should be developed for travelling from the start to the end of the journey. Although more research is being done on the patterns of people’s actual movements than in the past, few public transport centres have tried to identify the needs of those who do not use public transport.
In the opinion of the National Audit Office, analysing mobility patterns throughout Estonia using, for example, mobile positioning or traffic counting data, would help plan a more efficient public transport system and increase the number of public transport users. The current bus network and timetable planning tends to be focus on single counties and does not support inter-county and intermodal mobility. The timetables of different modes of transport (county, long-distance and local bus routes, planes, ferries, trains) are prepared on different grounds and within the competences given to the organiser, leading to fragmentation and inconsistencies between timetables.
The National Audit Office found that responsibility in the organisation of public transport is fragmented and there is overlap in the performance of tasks. The clear definition of responsibilities is also made more complicated by the institutional fragmentation of the organisation of public transport. For example, planning the public transport infrastructure is the responsibility of the Ministries of Regional Affairs and Agriculture, the Ministry of Climate and local authorities. The duplication of tasks – such as accounting, the organisation of procurement, data collection and the commissioning of studies – between the Ministry of Regional Affairs and Agriculture and the area-based public transport centres remains a problem in the organisation of public transport.
The classification of bus routes and the obligation to organise and finance them should be made more clear. The Public Transport Act does not make it clear which routes (county, long-distance or municipal) must be organised and financed by the state and which by the local authority, and there is no definition of an on-demand bus route in the Act. As a result of this confusion, local authorities are treated differently in practice. For example, according to the Southeastern Public Transport Centre, there are bus routes funded from the state budget that cover one local authority as well as routes where 90% of the stops are in one county and 10% in another.
The National Audit Office advised the Minister of Regional Affairs and Agriculture to develop a procedure for sharing data with public transport centres in order to study the mobility needs of people who use public transport as well as those who do not. Also, to set up a nationwide system to coordinate all modes of transport – including ferries, planes, trains, county and local bus transport.
In addition, the National Audit Office recommended to establish standards for the level of service of public transport and to set uniform principles for the financing of the route network based on service levels. A minimum baseline should be set below which the frequency of departures and connections must not fall, and the conditions under which it is unreasonably expensive to maintain a route should be set. It would also be necessary to agree, in cooperation with local authorities, on the unambiguous content and distribution of county bus, long-distance, local authority and on-demand routes, and on the principles of financing.
Background
The National Audit Office published an audit on the organisation of county public transport in 2021, and the National Audit Office also examined the resolution of the problems identified back then in the audit published today. The period analysed during the previous audit was 2017–2019. This time, the National Audit Office analysed whether, in the period 2020–2024, the mobility needs of people had been identified, a single ticketing system had been established and the timetables had been designed in such a manner that people can travel smoothly between different counties and transfer from one mode of transport to another.
From 1 July 2023, the coordinating role in nationwide, county and commercial bus transport belongs to the Ministry of Regional Affairs and Agriculture (previously to the Transport Administration), which has delegated the tasks of organising public transport in the counties to nine public transport centres and the Saaremaa and Hiiumaa municipality governments. In 2019, transport was organised on 1,502 and in 2024 on 1650 county bus routes.
Priit Simson
Communication Manager of the National Audit Office
+372 640 0777
+372 5615 0280
[email protected]
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http://www.riigikontroll.ee/
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Posted:
10/16/2025 10:00 AM
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Last Update:
10/16/2025 11:52 AM
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Last Review:
10/16/2025 11:52 AM