Construction of quays proceeds in Vuosaari Harbour

Largest-ever asphalt surfacing project under way in new port

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The all-time largest asphalt paving project in Finland has been started in the new Vuosaari Harbour, with an asphalt station on site grinding out some 240 tons of asphalt per hour.
      Responsibility for the paving of surfaces is with NCC Roads, the leading construction and property development company in the Nordic region. According to the company, the asphalt pavement work, covering a 175-hectare area, will be completed by December of 2008.
      The quantities are impressive: some 410,000 tons of asphalt will be laid down over the next eighteen months, the equivalent of surfacing a 10-metre wide highway from Helsinki to Kuopio, a distance of around 400 kilometres.
     
Apart from asphalt work, blasting is taking place in the logistics area, west of the harbour facility itself, where about a million cubic metres of rock will be excavated to fill harbour structures. Crushed rock will be transported to different parts of the harbour area.
      A concrete noise-abatement barrier on the eastern edge of the harbour has almost been completed, and the landscaping of the outer surface of the wall will begin during the summer, with the planting of trees and shrubs.
      As for traffic connections, a harbour railway line and a railyard with eight sets of tracks are under construction.
      The road haulage traffic from the Vuosaari Harbour to the Outer Ring Road (Kehä III) will proceed through a 1.5-kilometre tunnel, which is scheduled to be opened for traffic on October 9th this year.
     
The harbour road (Satamatie) will be the main artery to and from the purpose-built harbour, which will be opened at the end of 2008. Heavy traffic will be directed along the harbour road through the tunnel to Ring Road III. According to estimates, about 10,000 vehicles a day will use the route, coming from the harbour, the logistics area, the business park, and from the district of Vuosaari itself.
      The construction work for an additional ramp from Ring Road III to Porvoonväylä towards Helsinki will be started soon. The ramp will be completed by the autumn.
      The sea lane into the port has almost been completed and will go into operation at the end of the current year.
      The costs of the traffic infrastructure for the Vuosaari Harbour will be EUR 289 million.
     
The estimated size of passenger traffic will be 200,000 people per year. Even though the new harbour will be mainly a freight port, eventually replacing Helsinki's other downtown cargo port areas such as Sörnäinen and Länsisatama, it is most likely that for example Tallink’s Superfast vessels will be transferred to Vuosaari in 2008, when Tallink’s contract with the West Harbour (Länsisatama) comes to an end.


Links:
  Vuosaari Harbour project web service
  NCC Group

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