The work follows an announcement by the state that vehicles improperly parked both in an official parking lot and in the surrounding area will be towed away to storage, and possibly auctioned off if unclaimed. The Koidula checkpoint, in Võru County, lies on the Estonia-Russia border.

A total of 13 vehicles were removed on Wednesday, with work also starting on vehicles abandoned in the surrounding forests and other green areas.
While most of the vehicles are to be kept in storage awaiting the owners' claims, some are being put to other beneficial uses.

"Today, 13 vehicles will be leaving this parking lot — six will be towed to a guarded storage facility in Võru, five will go to Kuusakoski, and two will go to the Academy of Security Sciences, where they will be used in firefighter training. I'd like to believe this won't cost the taxpayer anything, meaning vehicle owners will have to pick them up from the guarded storage, and covering the costs is the responsibility of the owners," Siim Jaksi, head of the Transport Administration's supervision department, told ERR.

The concrete steps taken on apparently abandoned vehicles seem to have had their effect in any case — many vehicles which were parked around Koidula have already been removed following the announcement.

The Transport Administration and the Setomaa municipality have placed warning stickers on windshields of improperly parked cars.

"The reason why we started with the parking lot was to get vehicles off the green areas and into our lot, where they then are compliant with parking conditions. Once we get the lot in order, we'll move on to the green areas. And the same applies there: We'll tow them; the owner must collect them, and if they've been left for a long time — three months, four months without being picked up — then we may decide to sell them," Jaksi went on.

While some of the land is municipality or state owned, including RMK forest, in the case of vehicles abandoned on privately owned land, a similar procedure follows via the state in any case.

"The private landowner has no right to tow them away anywhere. Instead, they should contact the police or the local municipality, who will try to contact the vehicle owner. Hopefully, they succeed, and then the vehicle is removed by its owner," Jaksi said.

The Transport Administration had long struggled with the parking lot near the Koidula crossing. So many vehicles had been abandoned that regular parking there was a near impossibility, and the facility had started more to resemble a scrapyard.

In June this year, the administration sent out notifications to owners and placed reminders on windshields, informing them of the tow-away policy becoming a reality.

On Wednesday, the administration started taking action with those vehicles still left.

Jaksi added that longer-term solutions under consideration will include expanding the existing parking lot and installing barriers, or digging a culvert along the roadside to prevent cars from being left in the forest or on green areas.

It turned out that a vehicle being towed away isn't the worst outcome for the owners of improperly parked vehicles. One owner who had been to Petseri (Pechory), on the Russian side of the border, returned a couple of days later to find their vehicle propped up on bricks, after the tires had been stolen.

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