"We do not have that idea on the table," Kallas said, in response Nilisk's proposal, which came about due to the shortfall of over €20 million in the state budget for bus transportation.

"We made it clear at the beginning of the year, that we agree with making public transport free of charge for working-age people. For the groups in society that we believe do not have sufficient resources in today's economic climate – some of them do, but not all – we do not want to limit their mobility in any way, nor do we want to limit regional development," said Kallas.

"The managers of the public transport centers and all the other parties involved can certainly come up with different options," Kallas said.

Kallas listed several other potential ways to bring in more money for the bus network, including a gradual increase in ticket prices, making public transport payable for all working-age people, which was introduced at the start of this year, as well as increased supervision.

"These are solutions through which we could get some extra money. To a large extent, we will still have to find these funds from the state budget," Kallas said.

According to Kallas, fares for public transport are reviewed regularly. However, he admitted that this is not enough to cover the budget shortfall.

Kallas pointed out that public transport is expensive in every country. "Public transport, especially regional public transport, is expensive. It is expensive in every country in the world. But that's the price of it – as a country, we see that there should be life everywhere. For security reasons as well as for many other reasons," said Kallas.

Kallas also sees the much discussed car tax as a way to raise money for public transport. "We have been looking at the car tax from the perspective that a considerable part of it definitely must be used to improve public transport. Otherwise we cannot support such a concept," Kallas said.

Andrus Nilisk, director of the North-Estonia Public Transport Center, raised the issue on Wednesday that free bus travel for certain groups is encouraging them to travel by bus instead of train. Kallas acknowledged that this is a genuine point of concern.

"We have discussed this in those very areas where there are both train connections and bus connections to determine how to make sure we don't have parallel bus and train services, whereby an elderly person or a young person can ride one of them for free and not the other," said Kallas.

"This is a challenge that will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis as not all counties are affected," he said.

Currently, pre-school children, people with profound disabilities, people with severe visual impairments and all children with disabilities can travel free of charge. Pensioners, schoolchildren and students get reduced fares on the train.

On regional lines, all people up to the age of 19 and aged 63 and above travel free of charge. All people with at least a moderate disability are also entitled to free travel.

"It's a question of choice," Kallas said when asked by ERR why pensioners and students are able to travel for free on buses but not on trains.

"We know that up now there has always been an alternative to the train in the form of a bus service. And still, in most parts of Estonia, young people and the elderly have been able to travel free of charge. We need to analyze this very carefully, if we are going to have these types of discussions at all, how this will affect the movement of our people and how it affects our people's social interactions with different groups in society," Kallas said.

"This is such a broad and complex issue that we are certainly not considering it at the moment. We have to find other solutions and see what models we can develop," Kallas said.

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