A quick solution is being sought to the seemingly hopeless problems with the frontier road traffic between Finland and Russia.
In the ongoing discussions several options are being weighed. One would be to introduce an exceptional permit for goods vehicles coming through the Kotka Harbour to cross over to the Russian side at the Vaalimaa checkpoint. Another alternative would be to confine the border crossings of articulated lorries to the night-time only.
“Then we would not have queues at all”, estimates Director-General Juhani Tervala from the Ministry of Transport and Communications. On average there are between 400 and 500 articulated lorries per day aiming to cross over to Russia.
At present a Russian government decree is in force, which prohibits car-carrying vehicles from using the Vaalimaa border crossing point.
A frontier traffic working group has been set up to come up by October 7th with measures to ensure the smooth flow of lorry traffic at the Vaalimaa and Torfyanovska border crossing points.
As this paper has often noted, long tailbacks - often stretching to the tens of kilometres - have plagued the border crossings, as the flow of goods vehicles into Russia has expanded almost exponentially in recent years.
Car transporter trucks make up a sizeable proportion of the traffic.
