New tram line runs from Pasila to Kaartinkaupunki

EUR 15 million expansion is largest addition to the Helsinki tram network for nearly two decades

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By Kati Pukki and Annika Ruoranen
     
      Helsinki’s new No.9 tram will go into service tomorrow [Sunday 10.8.2008]. The extension to the capital’s tram network is the largest for years. In fact for nearly two decades, since the last completely new line to be opened was the extension of the No. 10 line to Pikku Huopalahti seventeen years ago. Now the tram offers a handy route from Aleksis Kiven katu in Alppila right into the centre of town.
     
As the No.9 takes to the rails, the Helsinki tram network is at its largest ebb since 1959. A total of five kilometres of new track has been laid, as anyone driving downtown will have noticed - the roadworks and street closures have been hard to miss.
      Now the work on the tracks themselves is all complete, but there are still things to be done with the streets that have been affected.
      Along Portaninkatu in Kallio, for instance, the roadworks are still going on, and Fleminginkatu still has a few holes to be filled in and some finishing work to be done.
     
It has been a long process leading up to the moment when the No. 9 takes on board its first passengers.
      It was back in May 1990 that the city’s Transport Committee noted in the minutes the idea for a tram line to run from Helsinginkatu via Fleminingkatu, Aleksis Kiven katu and the Pasila trainyards to Pasila Station, and then continuing from Pasilankatu past the headquarters of the Finnish Broadcasting Company on Radiokatu, all the way to Ilmala.
      In the space of nearly twenty years, the plans were modified somewhat. A line adhering fairly closely to what will open tomorrow went into the planning phase at the end of the 1990s, albeit that even this has been modified somewhat over the last ten years.
     
The basic idea was to replace the Helsinki City Transport inner city bus routes 17 and 23, and to run north-south from Ilmala to Merikatu, down by the shoreline in the south of the city.
      Some five years back, it became clear that Helsinki’s finances were not quite up to the full task, and the Ilmala section was sacrificed.
      This is not to say it has been knocked on the head forever: it remains on the books as a further expansion, and building work here should get going sometime at the beginnng of the next decade.
      By contrast, it was feedback from potential users, rather than tight budgets, that caused the planners to give up the idea of taking the line all the way down to Merikatu, and now it will have its end-stop at Kolmikulma in Kaartinkaupunki, just south of Bulevardi..
     
“When we finally got to the stage of breaking ground and building the line, things went ahead quite briskly” says Deputy Mayor Pekka Sauri (Greens) of the two-year construction project.
      The new line cost around EUR 15 million, of which roughly EUR 7 million will be met by Helsinki City Transport (HKL).
      The remainder falls to the City of Helsinki to pay.
      A completely new set of tracks was built in Alppila close to the old railway engineering sheds, and in fact this was the first time that this area was included in the public transport network.
      Not before time, too, for the old industrial area has in recent years seen a number of new residential developments going up, and more are to follow. People moving in were swayed by the knowledge that before very long there would be a tram line that could carry them from their doorstep right into the heart of the downtown area.
     
The tram network is still growing. Next on the agenda will be new tracks in the Kamppi area, close to the new bus terminal and shopping mall, as the No. 3 will have its route modified in 2009.
      There are also plans for a direct tram link from Jätkäsaari in the south-west (soon to be turned over to housing when the city’s harbour services move out to the purpose-built Vuosaari Harbour) to Kamppi.
      Pekka Sauri, the Deputy Mayor responsible for Public Works and Environmental Affairs, is himself quite a tram enthusiast. He says that he heard recently that when the Kamppi line comes into service the capital’s tram network will be larger than at any time in its entire history.
     
Tram traffic began in the capital in 1890, and at one time Finland had three cities - Helsinki, Turku, and Viipuri (now Vyborg in Western Russia) - with a tram network.
      Turku’s electric trams stopped running in 1972. The Vyborg network, opened by the Finns in 1913, was torn up in 1957, by which time the city was part of the Soviet Union.
     
The first trams will run on the “new” No. 9 route on Sunday from Pasila (at 07:41) and Kolminkulma (at 8:07).
      The use of the quotation marks is pertinent: an earlier incarnation of the 9-tram ran from the Market Square to Vallila between 1953 and 1976, and an even earlier one was in operation between Erottaja and Ruskeasuo from 1939 to 1946.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 9.8.2008

More on this subject:
 FACTFILE: Tram traffic is more environmentally-friendly

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Road construction will affect traffic in central Helsinki throughout summer (19.5.2008)

Links:
  Trams in Helsinki (Wikipedia)
  Helsinki City Transport (HKL)

ANNIKA RUORANEN AND KATI PUKKI / Helsingin Sanomat
kati.pukki@hs.fi