The country will spend just under €355 million on roads next year, around €20 million more than this year. Improving road safety is a priority. However, road builders see next year as complicated and point out that in reality there is little money for construction, Latvian Radio reports on December 23.
More money will be available for roads, as the road toll, will be increased from next year for trucks over three tonnes, which produce more emissions. This will add around €25 million to the budget, which will be used to rebuild two main roads. 20 kilometers of the A6 between Nīcgale and Daugavpils will be repaired. The A2 motorway near Grundzāle in Northern Vidzeme will also be repaired.
“I think [next year] will have roughly the same impact. Those two sections of the main road will be felt much more. There will not be the same [impact] as in previous years, for example, as the Ķekava bypass, which is a completely different quality road, but relatively in Latgale and northern Vidzeme, these two sections will be very important for these people and they will appreciate it,” said Tālivaldis Vectirāns, Director of the Road Infrastructure Department at the Ministry of Transport.
The Salacgrīva bridge is to be completed next year and procurement documentation for the Bauska bypass is to be prepared, with construction not expected to start until 2026.
€11 million will be spent next year to install average speed cameras in many locations.
Meanwhile, Andris Bērziņš, head of the Latvian Road Builder Association and former prime minister, said that the next year will be quite complicated for the industry, “because the industry’s capacity to do the work is about twice as big. This means that there will again be a lot of austerity. It means that there will be quite large tenders and a lot of competition for every piece of road that the state will put out to tender for works.”
He also criticized the leadership of the Transport Ministry: “Without saying it clearly, only less than a third goes to capital investments, real works and concrete projects on roads. The rest all goes to grants to local governments. It goes to the Latvian road maintainers. This means that we [the builders] do not have that amount. This year there were 104 million, next year [about] 23 [million]. 300 [EUR 354.7 million] is a sum that is artificially put together to sound very good. It should be said right up front: for Latvian road maintainers, for the winter period and also for the summer period for cleaning ditches and patching potholes, let’s say [there will be] EUR 65 million in annual subsidies from the road program. The money is being scraped together bit by bit, and the reality is that the money that goes directly to construction is scarce.”
In 2026 and the year after, the national budget is expected to provide about the same amount as next year. Bērziņš described this as evolutionary stagnation.
