RIGA - The number of trucks waiting to cross the Latvian-Russian border on the Latvian side reached 1,900 in the last week of May, a new record, the border guard announced. At 9 a.m. on May 30 there were 1,500 vehicles queuing at the Terehova border crossing post, and 400 at the Grebneva crossing. The sheer size of the line, stretching for miles along rural roads, has triggered an emergency situation. Juris Dombrovskis, chairman of the Ludza town council, told the Baltic News Service that the emergency situation was announced throughout the county before Easter and has yet to be called off.
"The emergency situation has not been recalled. We have not received any support from the government during these months 's neither any proposals nor assistance," said Dombrovskis.
Hot weather and failure to remove garbage in time could cause numerous health problems, he said.
Dombrovskis also pointed to the damaged roads, saying that the heavy trucks have deformed the surface of the road, transforming it into a sort of clay. As a result, passenger cars find it hard to use the roads.
He admitted that police are regulating traffic, and so far no serious accidents have been registered.
Valdis Trezins, president of Latvijas Auto, an association of international truckers, admitted that the situation is serious and that the lines are not expected to shrink anytime soon.
Authorities are not doing enough to improve the situation, he said.
"If deadlines are not set and real measures are not taken, the lines will remain," the head of the association said. "It is great that cargoes are being shipped through Latvia, but if this situation does not improve, part of the cargoes will be lost."
Any breakthrough in decreasing the bottlenecks will require Russia's help, government officials have said, and the recent signing of a border agreement could foster bilateral cooperation.
Trezins said that the truckers' association is planning to meet with representatives of the Transport Ministry on Thursday to discuss the situation. In theory, he said, the traffic of motor vehicles should ease up in the second part of the summer, but previous experience shows that congestion only grows worse during that period.
In late April, some 1,000 trucks were waiting daily at the Latvian-Russian border. Then the truck lines disappeared altogether, but two weeks ago started to develop again.
Truck lines at the border first started to appear in August last year. The queues disappeared shortly before the New Year, but then re-emerged again in January. The congestion threatened road safety and drivers littered roadsides in the border area, while local residents had to put up with constant noise coming from truck engines.
