New system improves border crossing

TALLINN - According to various estimates, the electronic border queue system that was launched exactly a year ago at the road border-crossing points between Estonia and Russia has saved Estonian road transport companies around 4 million euros, reports Aripaev Online.

Hannes Plinte, the head of GoSwift, the company that operates the border queues system, stated that the electronic border queue solution that has been working for the past year has made it possible for drivers to get used to a more convenient mode of border-crossing. There is no more need to queue for long hours; the average waiting period for crossing the Estonian-Russian border on the road is one hour. “We have already achieved a major improvement, but we are still working on getting people across the border even faster,” he explained.

Secretary General of the Estonian Association of International Road Transport Carriers Toivo Kuldkepp said that the companies are able to use employees’ working hours more efficiently thanks to the border queue system.
“One border-crossing point between Estonia and Russia is used by an average of 80 lorry trucks each day, and this means that the existing three border-crossing points are used by nearly 87,600 vehicles each year; previously, each of those lorry trucks had to queue an average of 60 hours on the border,” he explained. “Nearly half of those lorry trucks were Estonian and, hence, we have calculated that the Estonian companies have been able to save 4 million euros a year with the help of this system, whereas all trucks together save even more money,” said Kuldkepp.

During the past year, the Estonian-Russian border was crossed at the three operating border-crossing points by more than 626,000 cars and lorry trucks. Sixty-one percent of the queue bookings were made over the Internet on the Web site www.eestipiir.ee, and the GoSwift call center took a total of 151,000 calls and 3,800 written information queries.
In June this year, as a pilot project, the GoSwift electronic border queuing system was launched in the Russian-Estonian direction as well, at the Kunichina Gora border-crossing point. In the coming weeks the GoSwift system will also be launched at the Ivangorod and Shumilkino border-crossing points.