Even before Tartu became a European Capital of Culture in 2024, many residents dreamed of a direct train connection between the university town and Riga. The cultural capital year renewed hopes of launching an express train between Tartu and Riga, but service has yet to begin.

Test runs between Valga and Riga with Estonian trains have already taken place and the train types are now undergoing authorization by the European Union Agency for Railways.

"This procedure ensures that a train operating in Estonia is also suitable for service in Latvia, that all necessary technical requirements for international transport are met, compatibility with Latvia's rail infrastructure is guaranteed and that everything is safe," explained Elron board member Märt Ehrenpreis.

So far, no major deficiencies have been identified that would prevent the line from opening in Europe. According to Ehrenpreis, the plan is still to launch the Tartu–Riga express before the end of the year. This summer, the Ministry of Regional Affairs and Agriculture decided to allocate €450,000 from the planned subsidy budget for the Tartu–Riga line to fund wage increases for train drivers and technicians. Ehrenpreis said this decision has not delayed the launch.

"The European procedure has been slower and more overloaded in the summer months due to holidays than we expected. To my knowledge, the funding needed to open the service is still in place. Over the summer, some of those resources were used for operations, which would have been possible if the authorizations had come through earlier," Ehrenpreis said.

The initial plan is to extend the current Valga service with an early morning departure from Riga to Tartu and a return trip in the evening from Tartu to Riga. Four intermediate stops are planned between Estonia and Latvia.

Last week, Elron also announced a tender to purchase satellite communication equipment for on-board Wi-Fi. The need became clear during test runs between Valga and Riga when sections of the route were found to lack sufficient mobile data coverage or capacity.

"We want to significantly improve the quality of the Wi-Fi service on trains. For that reason, we plan to equip the trains designated for the Riga line with Starlink antennas. It's a working and testable solution — we've already tried it on test trains and the results have been entirely satisfactory," said Ehrenpreis.

Elron expects to install the equipment at the end of this year and the beginning of next. The final cost will be determined during the tender, though preliminary calculations have been made. The company has also not yet disclosed what the ticket price for the Tartu–Riga line might be.

"We've done profitability analyses for various scenarios. What we're seeing is that demand for the Riga route is steadily increasing. The passenger numbers we forecast in earlier studies were actually reached quite some time ago. We've also seen growth from travel groups, including visitors from Finland. We've even run small-scale ad campaigns on Facebook targeting Finland," Ehrenpreis explained.

"There is clear interest, and that gives us confidence that both passenger numbers and the popularity of this line will continue to rise," the Elron board member said.

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