“Smart Lane gives passengers travelling with a car and who complete their check-in before arriving at the port, the option to save time by boarding the ship through automatic gates, which identify the passenger’s vehicle and allow boarding the ship via automatic gates,” Meelis Pint, Business Development Area Manager at Tallink, said.

According to Mr Pint, the Smart Lane currently piloted makes boarding the ship with a passenger car quicker and smoother, thereby saving time for those travelling with a car and also reducing traffic jams in the port area.

“Passengers who are travelling with a passenger car and have a maximum of two people per car, get an advance notification offering them the option to use the Smart Lane automatic lane with pre-registering,” Pint noted.

The aim of the pilot, which began in late April, is to make sure that the software used is reliable and the whole boarding process goes smoothly. “In the future, when we have made sure that the system is failure-proof, we certainly want to extend it to vehicles with a higher number of passengers and for bookings where a group travels by several cars,” he added.

When using the Smart Lane, each passenger must have a boarding pass printed out or available in a mobile app ready to be presented to a controller for checking at the port waiting area. If a passenger or passengers do not have a boarding pass, the controller will remove the vehicle from the waiting area.

During the test period, passengers can use the Smart Lane on all Tallinn-Helsinki departures on Mondays and on four departures on Sundays and Tuesdays. On other days of the week, the option of using the automatic lane depends on the number of previous bookings.