Vilnius authorities are planning to add routes to the public transport network and increase the frequency of service on the existing ones.
The Vilnius City Council are deciding on Wednesday whether to approve amendments to the public procurement conditions for the search for private carriers on regular bus routes in Vilnius and neighbouring municipalities. The proposal includes a requirement that the new routes should only be served by electric buses.
“There will be a big qualitative change for the outer areas of the city, where we currently have bus stops where the bus comes once an hour. The objective is not to have any routes that are served less frequently than 15 minutes,” Vilnius Mayor Valdas Benkunskas told BNS.
The changes will also affect some of the current routes, he said.
“The intensity will definitely increase, especially on the most crowded routes, where the intensity will increase so that buses or trolleybuses will run at intervals of a few minutes at peak times,” said Benkunskas.
“The intensification will be done without changing the mode of public transport – buses and trolleybuses will remain,” he added.
The purchases will create 12 new routes and increase the frequency of 44 existing public transport routes.
“The aim is for 87–90 percent of the population in any part of the city to have access to public transport,” the mayor said.
In all, the municipality will add 30 percent to the current public transport mileage, according to Benkunskas. While public transport currently covers 43.8 million kilometres a year, if the council approves the proposal, this would rise to 67 million kilometres a year.
If the council approves the decision, the city can begin looking for private contractors this spring and the routes could start operating in late 2026 or 2027.
“The municipality will buy additional mileage from the market to service public transport and [the public tender regulations] specify that all the services by the winners must be provided only with electric buses,” Benkunskas said.
“A major change will take place in public transport,” he added.
Last May, Vilnius Public Transport (VVT), the municipal company that services part of the city’s public transport network, announced that it would buy 91 Škoda 32Tr low-floor trolleybuses from the Czech industrial group Škoda for 52.3 million euros.
Benkunskas said at the time that the capital’s public transport fleet was being renewed on such a scale for the first time in history.
VVT still operates 160 Škoda trolleybuses with an average age of 31 years. The overall average age of all trolleybuses in the capital city’s public transport system is now around 23 years.
By 2026, Vilnius is expected to renew its entire fleet of trolleybuses so that the average age is just over two years.
Currently, VVT has 649 vehicles: 397 buses and 252 trolleybuses.
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