Daily Photo Theme: Public Transport 3 - Trolleybuses

Third of the main public transportation kind in Riga is trolleybuses. Trolleybus transportation in Riga was opened in 1947 and now it is actually second most popular (or rather I should say - most massive) public transportation in Riga. It may sound unexpected but buses takes 1st place with around 4 mio passengers per month (data from August), trolleybuses takes second place with approximately 3 mio passengers and trams are 3rd with a bit more than 2 mio passengers in August. But it's all comes clear when we take a look at how many routes each transport has: trams - 9, trolleybuses - 20 and buses - 55 (!) different routes. So, if we calculate passengers per route then trams are sure leaders. It turns out that the fastest of these transports are also buses - average speed of 21 km/h, then comes trams with 16,5 km/h and the slowest are trolleybuses with ~16 km/h. Again it may sound weird because - what for all the tram infrastructure, dedicated rails, if they are slower than buses? But here the explanation also could be simple - the speed of buses is explainable by the fact that buses are driving in the farthermost routes which leads to scarcely populated areas in deep suburban outskirts where the traffic isn't intensive so the buses can drive faster and their average speed is higher than trams and trolleys who have to struggle with traffic jams/signal lights in most of their routes length.

In the first picture you see several trolleybuses on row on Čaka street in Riga centre, on the second pic - it is the most weighted trolleybus route in Riga (almost 0.5 mio passengers in August - 1/6 of all trolleybus passengers!): 15th trolleybus, which, btw, is also my trolleybus route. Trolleybus fleet is partly renewed, part of them are new Solaris (like in 1st pic) and Škoda trolleybuses but part of them - still old ones from Soviet time (like in 2nd pic).