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In the 7th video in the Enter e-Estonia: the video series, we examine mobility services. And explore some of the ways that Estonia’s digital solutions make the lives of its citizens easier, faster, and more convenient.
In this video: mobility services in Estonia
One of the first of such services was an emergency response system introduced in 2000. This automatically pinpointed the location of any mobile phone used in an emergency call and helped police and medical dispatchers to the scene more quickly. In the same year, mobile parking was put into effect. And this allowed drivers to select their parking zone and pay the fee. Since then it has advanced with a fully automated functionality. Now, your parking session starts and ends when the car’s ignition is turned off and on and fees are added to the driver’s month phone bill.
Another system which helps Estonia’s drivers is the portal of the Estonian Road Administration. This lets residents check the background history of used cars, register licence plates, and even buy or sell a car. All with the click of a button and without visiting a governmental agency!
In 2011, Estonia implemented a digital border queue management system. This lets both cars and trucks reserve a time to cross the EU/Russia border and has cut waiting time down from an average of 60 hours to a mere 1 hour! Not only has this improved working conditions for truck drivers, but it has saved logistics companies millions of euros.
Other mobility services include the first self-driving public bus lines, launched in 2019. As well as e-police, which lets officers quickly view a person’s data, both in Estonia and throughout the entire Schengen zone. This technology has cut down on the time it takes to perform such a search (15-20 minutes in the past, to 2 seconds) and has helped police catch an average of 7 wanted criminals a day.
In the next video, we’ll explore education. See you then!
