Tram service to Tallinn’s airport is set to resume in early July after a nearly two-year suspension caused by construction and infrastructure issues, city officials said. Authorities are also planning an additional tram line to improve connections between the airport and the city.
It has been impossible to get to Tallinn Airport by tram since the summer of 2023, when roadworks and the construction of the Old Port tram line halted traffic. When tram services resumed in the fall of the same year, it emerged that due to the construction of the Rail Baltic terminal, trams would not be able to reach the airport until the end of 2025.
It later became clear that because of construction problems with Rail Baltic, access to the airport along the tram tracks would in fact not be possible until the summer of 2026.
According to Tallinn’s Deputy Mayor for Transport, Joel Jesse, the tram connection between the city and the airport should be restored within the first two weeks of July. The additional delay of a couple of weeks is due, Jesse said, to an anomaly related to a Tallinn Water pipeline. Specifically, the height of the water pipeline had not been correctly marked in the design plans.
“Things like this do happen — design documentation doesn’t always match reality, and sometimes earlier information may simply have been entered incorrectly,” Jesse said.
Tallinn City Transport, which is owned by the city, has ordered the construction of a new branch of tram track near the airport, and the corresponding contract has already been signed. This new branch would make it possible for another tram line, in addition to No. 2, to run to the airport in the future. Before the opening of the Old Port line, for example, tram line No. 4 used to run to the airport, with its other terminus located in Tondi.
According to Jesse, plans are also in place to move forward with the second branch, and current discussions suggest that one tram line would run toward Kopli and another toward Tondi. When the second route might be completed will become clear to the public in the summer.
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