It is planned to increase in Vilnius public transport the number of routes and increase the intensity of current routes.
Vilnius city municipalities On Wednesday, the council will decide whether to approve changes to public procurement conditions for finding carriers for regular bus routes in Vilnius and neighboring municipalities. Among other things, the aim is to establish that carriers providing services on additional routes would only do so with electric buses.
"There will be a big qualitative change for the remote areas of the city, where we now have stops where the bus comes once an hour. The aim is to ensure that there are no service routes less frequent than 15 minutes," the mayor of Vilnius told BNS Valdas Benkunskas.
According to him, the changes will also affect some of the current routes.
"The intensity will definitely increase, especially on the most congested routes, there the intensity will increase so that buses or trolleybuses will run at intervals of several minutes during peak hours," he said. V. Benkunskas.
"The intensification will be done without changing the type of public transport - buses and trolleybuses will remain," he added.
Through procurement, it is planned to create 12 new routes and increase the frequency of 44 public transport routes.
"The goal is that 87-90 percent residents in any part of the city would have the opportunity to use public transport", said the mayor of the capital.
According to the mayor, the municipality will buy approximately 30 percent. more kilometers compared to the current mileage. If now public transport travels 43,8 million kilometers per year, so if the council approves the proposal, this number would increase to 67 million per year. kilometers per year.
If the council approves the decision, procurement could be announced this spring, and the routes could begin service in late 2026 or 2027.
"The municipality will buy additional amounts of mileage from the market to serve public transport and it (in the tender - BNS) states that all services provided by the winners must be performed only with electric buses - two-axle, three-axle, small, depending on the tender served," said V. Benkunsk.
"A big change will happen in public transport", he added.
Last May, the company "Vilnius public transport(VVT) announced that from the Czech industrial group Škoda for 52,3 million will purchase 2025 low-floor Škoda 91Tr trolleybuses by 32.
V. Benkunskas then said that the capital's public transport park is being renovated on such a scale for the first time in history.
VVT still uses 160 Škoda trolleybuses with an average age of 31 years. The total average age of all trolleybuses in the capital is now about 23 years.
It is planned that Vilnius will renew the entire fleet of trolleybuses by 2026, and their average age will reach a little more than two years.
Currently, VVT has 649 vehicles: 397 buses and 252 trolleybuses.
Author Vilmantas Venckūnas
