On Thursday, 23 February, the joint meeting of the Riga City Council's Finance and Administration Issues Committee and Transport Issues Committee supported the creation of the Riga City Council's Spatial Planning and Mobility Department. This is done to ensure effective cooperation between municipal institutions in the organisation of planning, maintenance, design and construction of traffic infrastructure facilities, and to avoid overlapping functions between institutions.
The creation of the Department for Spatial Planning and Mobility will bring together a number of municipal institutions that currently perform similar tasks related to the management of the city's traffic infrastructure. The new department will merge the Riga City Council Traffic Department and the municipal agency Rīgas gaisma, as well as add the Public Infrastructure Development Board and the Territorial Improvement Board of the Central Administration. The new department will also include some of the public open space maintenance functions currently performed by the Riga City Council's Housing and Environment Department.
"Riga must continue to put the principles of good governance into practice. The awareness of and demand for high quality, safe and modern transport infrastructure is growing. This means that the ability of the municipality to provide it must grow too. With the reorganisation of traffic management, we are moving towards a more efficient and qualitative model for the maintenance and development of the city's infrastructure," says Jānis Lange, Riga City Executive Director.
Vilnis Ķirsis, Riga City Council Deputy Chairman for Traffic Infrastructure and Development, said: "Fragmentation creates confusion and increases bureaucracy, while an organised system leads to an efficient order of things and smooth processes that allow the work to be done faster and to a higher quality – this is precisely the aim of reorganising the traffic infrastructure maintenance management in Riga City Council. With this decision, a joint unit is created, responsible for ensuring a safe and organised traffic infrastructure in the capital – from street and pavement maintenance to lighting, and for the public open space as a whole."
The reorganisation is planned because the current division of functions in the municipality is unable to ensure the planning and development of spatial and mobility infrastructure in the quality expected by the residents of Riga. As the audit commissioned by the municipality shows, compared to similar cities in Europe, the division of responsibilities in Riga is fragmented. A total of six different municipal units currently carry out various types of maintenance, planning and construction work.
Similarly, a major issue affecting the management of transport infrastructure is the lack of resources. According to the audit data commissioned by the Riga City Council, the salaries of the employees are not competitive, which is why 7 % of the positions in the Riga City Council Transport Department are currently vacant, while 38 % of the department's specialists work overtime. To make the new Spatial Planning and Mobility Department an attractive place to work for traffic professionals, this year's municipal budget plans to include € 375 000 to increase the salary fund.
The new department is expected to start work on 1 September this year. The final decision on the creation of the Spatial Planning and Mobility Department will be made at the Council meeting on 1 March.
Information prepared by: Edīte Matuseviča, Project Coordinator at the External Communications Department of the Riga City Council’s Communications Board, e-mail: edite.matusevica@riga.lv