Vehicles no longer allowed to park or stop on sidewalks for loading starting July

Delivery van parked on the sidewalk in Tallinn. Source: ERR

Starting in July, vehicles will no longer be allowed to park or stop on sidewalks for loading and unloading goods. The legislative amendment is intended to improve pedestrian traffic safety on sidewalks but will also make urban freight transport more complicated and expensive.

Until now, traffic law permitted vehicles to stop on sidewalks for loading or unloading, provided that a 1.5-meter-wide path was left clear for pedestrians. But starting in July, even that exception will no longer apply. According to the Ministry of Climate, the change represents the removal of a special exemption.

“At times, this exemption may have been abused. It allowed vehicles to stop on sidewalks for the moment of loading or unloading, but not for extended periods when goods are also being transported elsewhere — that would constitute parking,” said Hindrek Allvee, adviser at the Ministry of Climate’s roads and railways department.

According to Urmas Uudemets, CEO of logistics company Via 3L, transport companies were only nominally involved in the legislative process. The change will make delivering goods more difficult, particularly in central Tallinn but also across the rest of Estonia.

“So what are we supposed to do now? Park the vehicle 100–200 meters away and start carting pallets of goods to stores? Or imagine blocking the bus lane in front of the Forum center on Narva maantee. We’ll definitely need more transport workers for large-volume deliveries. Another issue is that a single vehicle will now be able to serve far fewer customers if it has to deliver from farther away. And then there’s the question of what our law enforcement authorities are going to do about this,” Uudemets said.

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