Estonia: reduction in travel time between the country’s two largest cities

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Estonie : réduction du temps de parcours entre les 2 plus grandes villes du pays

[10/2/2020] Estonia: reduction in travel time between the country’s two largest cities

In August 2020, Eurovia delivered a 23-kilometre section of the brand new motorway connecting Estonia’s two largest cities—Tallinn, the capital, and Tartu, in the southeastern part of the country. This particular section located between Kose and Võõbu reduce the distance between the two large urban by 3.5 kilometres to 181 kilometres. In addition, the speed limit on this segment was raised to 120 kilometres per hour (as against 110 previously), thereby reducing average travel time between Tallinn and Tartu by 9 minutes.

Since 2017, teams from TREV-2 Grupp (Eurovia) have been building part of this section—a 12-kilometre segment in a dual 2-lane configuration between Kose and Ardu, including multiple-level crossroads, rest areas, parking zones, and wildlife passageways and tunnels.

In addition to the 12-kilometre segment of the main carriageway, which required major earthworks, a new 1.8-kilometre low-traffic section was built to connect the motorway to Ardu, thereby providing road access to schools, one of the new rest areas, and electric-bicycle stations—a first for a rural zone.

This is one of the most important projects carried out in Estonia since the country’s independence. In fact, the media in Estonia has called it the “construction project of the century”.