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Vidzeme region covers the central and northern parts of Latvia. As a cultural region Vidzeme also includes the capital of Latvia- but functionally Vidzeme is more influenced by important suburban zone around the capital, mainly characterised by private housing and cars-dominated mobility. Vidzeme also includes several county centres, as Sigulda, Cēsis, Valmiera, Salacgrīva, Ogre and others.
The rural side of Vidzeme is characterised by forests, agricultural lands (with livestock as a dominant use), and small villages. An important part of the territory is classified as Natura 2000 territories, the region is well known for its beautiful landscapes, that offers a great possibility for rural tourism development.
The Latvian Greenways Association unites municipalities that oversee the Greenways – the former railway lines adopted for the use of non-motorized transport.
The Association coordinates their work of maintenance and development of the greenways, as well as brings project-based investments by being active in EU-funded projects. The Association actively participates in mobility planning as a relevant stakeholder, cooperates with Local Action groups and private initiatives with the aim to enhance the network of greenways.
The proximity of the capital and the suburban housing districts challenges the pendulum migration-related mobility.
The main challenge is the connectivity in those rural areas – the mobility between villages and county centers for everyday migration and tourism mobility is an issue.
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Key characteristics
Vidzeme region covers the central and northern parts of Latvia. As a cultural region Vidzeme also includes the capital of Latvia- but functionally Vidzeme is more influenced by important suburban zone around the capital, mainly characterised by private housing and cars-dominated mobility. Vidzeme also includes several county centres, as Sigulda, Cēsis, Valmiera, Salacgrīva, Ogre and others.
The rural side of Vidzeme is characterised by forests, agricultural lands (with livestock as a dominant use), and small villages. An important part of the territory is classified as Natura 2000 territories, the region is well known for its beautiful landscapes, that offers a great possibility for rural tourism development.
The Latvian Greenways Association unites municipalities that oversee the Greenways – the former railway lines adopted for the use of non-motorized transport.
The Association coordinates their work of maintenance and development of the greenways, as well as brings project-based investments by being active in EU-funded projects. The Association actively participates in mobility planning as a relevant stakeholder, cooperates with Local Action groups and private initiatives with the aim to enhance the network of greenways.
The proximity of the capital and the suburban housing districts challenges the pendulum migration-related mobility.
The main challenge is the connectivity in those rural areas – the mobility between villages and county centers for everyday migration and tourism mobility is an issue.
The lighthouse site has developed a network of Greenways based on former Railways. It offers a possibility to develop micromobility for tourism, but also for everyday mobility, as these railway paths are relaying different scale habitations (villages, county centres). The main challenge is to maintain the greenways in order to use them properly and to ensure the connectivity and accessibility (all kinds of accessibility – physical, informational, visual). Apart from the the Greenways, the rural mobility is mainly characterised by private car transport. The public transport is well operational when interconnecting towns and county centers. In villages the public transport mainly concerns the school mobility, by serving the village twice a day. In most of the villages there is no sidewalks for people and no place for bicycles – the micromobility can be even dangerous. Oftentimes, there are not frequent train connections, buses are rare and roads are dangerous for sidewalk and bicycles, thus, the greenways could propose an alternative net of mobility.
The region is a touristic region – a rich landscape (rivers, forests, highlands), small attractive towns with rich cultural heritage. Small rural business (a lot of them supported by LEADER) operates tourism services in the region. Some county centres (such as Cēsis and Sigulda) have a strong tourism planning component in their strategies. Still some remoted areas miss catering and accommodation services. The Greenways and multimodal mobility are sometimes difficult to access and multimodality is often inexistent. The opportunity hides in a more coordinated action between different stakeholders to propose around the greenways more tourism services as it has a high potential of connecting different touristic sites. There are some good examples of electric cars and electric bicycle charging points with catering possibilities and/or side-seeing possibilities, but these kinds of complex offers could be developed more.
Transforming Former Railways into Greenways
Greenways are relatively new initiative in Latvia to develop the former railway lines for the use for hiking and cycling as low-carbon, non-motorised transport corridors. Greenways are accessible for visitors with different levels of mobility: the elderly, young children, the disabled, as the routes rarely involve slopes steeper than 3%, since most of them follow the routes of disused railway lines.
Greenways development have shown that it is possible to transfer the visitors from the main cities and make them interested to visit remote areas and spend time and finances in the rural areas. Hence, Greenways support sustainable tourism mobility. For creating diverse experience, many recreational areas on the route are installed, improvements of nearby culture or nature objects (including former stations), making the course accessible (including route marking using former railway sleepers), connections with existing infrastructure and creating the restriction for motorized transport, where necessary.
Numerous agreements were made with the private and public landowners to use the land for the routes and participatory approach is crucial as the local communities are involved in maintaining the greenways. Significant work for communicating with the residents as well as building the knowledge for the local policymakers, nature heritage managers, tourism specialists and local authorities took place.
The Greenways are owned by National government transferred with loan agreement to municipalities or owned by municipalities themselves; while smaller part of is privately-owned.
Transforming industrial heritage along former railways
Many former railway stations were transformed by private and or public sectors into activity/ tourism/ service spots: e.g. Suntaži station is transformed into a design hotel, Žīguri station is recently bought by local beekeepers (rural tourism site), Gulbene and Alūksne has been offering its interactive railway-themed exhibitions and activities, and offer visitors electric bike charging point and a bike service point, Ērgļi station is transformed in a local tourism centre and a restaurant, while e.g. Kangari station is of a dual use – 1st floor is offered for visitors and events take place there, while second floor is inhabited.
The former train stations have a great potential to become mobility points as they are linking the Greenways with county centers/villages and other means of public transportation.. Some of the stations are already operating in this manner – e.g. Gulbene station (regular and narrow-gauge railway transport, as well as bus station). Still the inter-connection and accessibility is a key challenge to be addressed.
Latvian Greenways Association
info@greenways.lv
https://greenways.lv/
fb.com/greenways.lv
