Client: Harju County Association of Local Governments (HOL)
Location: Harju County, Estonia
Year: 2020–2021
Sector: Mobility Equity · GTFS Data · Policy Handbook
As Tallinn’s public transport gets smarter, its surrounding commuter towns risk being left behind — this study mapped exactly where that equity gap opens up, and built a handbook for closing it.
As smart-city mobility solutions advance, high-efficiency public transport becomes a luxury concentrated in top-tier cities. Harju County — Tallinn plus its surrounding municipalities — faced a growing imbalance: some places could afford smart-city transit solutions, others couldn’t. The challenge was ensuring mobility justice beyond the municipal border of the smart city.
Commissioned by the Harju County Association of Local Governments, delivered with Demos Helsinki, and funded through the EU Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme’s SUMBA project (Sustainable Urban Mobility and Commuting in the Baltic Cities). Findings were presented at a SUMBA conference in March 2021.
Scored 2,917 public transit stops across Harju County on 19 metrics grouped into two indices — Service Performance (from GTFS data, route delays, passenger counts) and Potential Demand (built-environment and census data, plus qualitative points-of-interest observation) — turning unstructured GTFS data into a regional mobility equity map. 64 stops across 25 locations were surveyed on the ground with spherical panoramic photography and drone flights.
Delivered as a bilingual executive summary, full Estonian report, cartography annexes, and a “Mobility Justice Handbook” of design and policy principles for local place leaders — organised around four ideas: The New Modality, The New Local, Soft Markets, and Soft Hubs.
- Public transport modal share is only around 12% across most of Harju County, versus 40% in Tallinn — a stark and measurable urban/rural equity gap.
- 53% of surveyed stops had no shelter, 69% lacked comfortable seating, and 92% had incomplete or missing signage and timetable information.
- Safe, accessible paths connecting a stop to nearby onward transit existed at only 14% of visited sites.
- 40% of Harju County’s population is under 19 or over 65 — the groups most dependent on quality public transit, yet stop design consistently hadn’t prioritised their needs.
- Historical, Soviet-era stop designs were, in several cases, found to be more people-friendly than many of their contemporary replacements.
- The average Tallinn household spends roughly €259 a month on car-related costs — about a quarter of average income — a direct economic argument for investing in better transit stops instead.
Gave HOL and its member municipalities a concrete, data-grounded map of where mobility equity breaks down across the region, plus a practical handbook of design and policy responses — covered directly on Demos Helsinki’s own blog as an example of making transportation work for people.