Motorway E18 between Helsinki and Turku is finally completed

Trouble-ridden final section opened to traffic without ceremony - temporary closures likely in the spring

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It is finally possible to make the entire drive from Helsinki to Turku along a new motorway (E18), as the 28-kilometre section from Lohja to Lahnajärvi was opened to traffic on Wednesday at 9:00 p.m.
      According to the Finnish Road Administration, the motorway is now safe, the systems work, and the problems with the several tunnels along the section have been ironed out.
      However, several temporary close-downs have been scheduled for the spring, as the testing of the tunnel- and traffic control systems will still continue until the summer.
      The delays were caused by the computer software which controls the tunnel gate devices, traffic lights, and lane guidance systems.
     
No fanfares or opening ceremonies greeted the opening of the road section - only the traffic signs and guideposts were changed and traffic was directed to use the new route.
      ”Hopefully everything will go well during the night. Night traffic is quiet, and in the morning the new motorway will be open to traffic between Helsinki and Turku”, said Matti Vehviläinen, the Director of Investments at the Finnish Road Administration.
      A drive from Helsinki to Turku and vice versa along the new motorway contains no less than seven tunnels, with the longest one, Karnainen, being 2.2 kilometres in length, an unprecedented distance for a Finnish road tunnel.
      The opening of the Lohja-Lahnajärvi stretch also means that the old narrow Highway 1 will calm down, when those approximately 10,000 vehicles which used to drive along that road every day will now be switching to the new motorway, which has stood empty, apparently ready but unused. for a couple of months.
     
The police intend to maintain close surveillance of traffic in the tunnels in order to prevent motorists from making stupid mistakes, as was seen to happen during the first snow storm of the winter, when some drivers flouted death by stopping their cars in a tunnel in an adjacent recently-opened section, in order to scrape the ice and snow from their windscreens.
     
However, the European Highway E18, which is part of the Nordic Triangle, linking the Nordic capitals with each other, has not been entirely completed yet.
      It is still not possible to drive along the motorway all the way from the Port of Turku to Russia.
      The complete Turku-Vaalimaa (the border with Russia) E18 is scheduled to be open by 2015.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Opening of last stretch of Turku-Helsinki motorway postponed further (7.1.2009)

Links:
  Finnish Road Administration
  Tieyhtiö Ykköstie Oy press release 28.1.2009: Lahnajärvi-Lohja section of E18 motorway was opened for traffic on the 28th of January, 2009

Helsingin Sanomat