FinEst Smart Mobility

Helsinki, Finland (also Tallinn, Estonia)

About the city. Ferry connection between Helsinki and Tallinn has over 8 million annual passengers. The connection between Helsinki West Harbor and Tallinn Old City Harbor is one of the busiest in the world.

Goal

The main goal is to make the traffic flows more fluent in Helsinki West Harbour, in Tallinn Old City Harbour and in areas adjacent to the ports. Moreover, the objective of the FinEst SmartMobility project was to reduce emissions, noise and other negative impacts of traffic between Helsinki and Tallinn in both cities and ports. The aim was to address the issues by seeking smart mobility solutions.

Implementation period. The project was developed from 2016 to 2019.

Fact

FinEst Smart Mobility is co-funded by the Interreg Central Baltic 2014–2020 programme with a total budget of 1.8 million euros. The programme finances results-oriented cross-border cooperation projects in Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Sweden.

Solutions

https://youtu.be/eVM9vpfFvbA

New solutions based on open data

• During the project, traffic and mobility pilots were developed to solve the traffic challenges in many ways. Among other things, there was the production of real time schedule and operation data directed towards the traffic control, and the use of an open interface for the provision of the data made the schedules integratable to other interfaces, such as journey planners, too (FinEst API pilot, Fleetrange Ltd.). Another pilot produced predictive and measuring data of the ferry traffic-related traffic flows and volumes, which was then forwarded to the traffic management operators to prevent queues from building up. (Harbour’s PSO pilot, Infotripla Oy). Also, a supplementary mode of transport was developed for the traffic between West Harbour and the Helsinki Airport (Kyyti pilot, Kyyti Group). Furthermore, the work included the development of a smart application, which guides truck drivers to the port at the right moment in order to reduce unnecessary waiting in the vicinity of the harbour area (FinEst Mobility pilot, GoSwift OÜ).

• The FinEst Smart Mobility project also enabled the drafting of a traffic control plan for the Tallinn ring road. The plan ensures that the smart traffic systems are included in the upcoming development project of the ring road, with investments in traffic safety and fluency of the journey.

• In terms of public transport, the project enables the integration of the Finnish Digitransit service into the Estonian peatus.ee service, and thus, travel chain planning over the sea in the future.

The project has received funding from Interreg Central Baltic Programme 2014-2020.

The main results of the project:

• Harbour’s PSO by Infotripla is a real-time information system to monitor traffic in the Helsinki West Harbour. The system recommends routes for outbound traffic and sends alerts to traffic management officials. After project completion, Infotripla has become part of Jätkänsaari Mobility Lab in Helsinki – a large-scale umbrella project where smart mobility solutions are tested and scaled up for further use.
• FinEst API by Fleetrange is an automated and real-time schedule tracking of ship traffic between Helsinki West Terminal and Tallinn Old City Harbour. The FinEst API combines data from various public open data sources such as the ship’s automatic tracking system data, schedules, ship parameters, historical tracking data and weather observations to provide real-time data about the ship’s departure and arrival.
• FinEst Mobility by GoSwift is an application targeted towards truck drivers; It sends notifications about the exact time, when to drive to the ferry terminal gates and thus, reduces waiting at the port gates in the harbour.  Logistic companies responsible for the trucks in the ferries and Tallink lines have made the platform available for their drivers.
• The Kyyti app developed by Kyyti Group app aimed to decrease the use of private cars between West Harbour and Vantaa Airport by offering an affordable shared taxi service and public transport route information together with ticket sales. Kyyti combined public transport in the city, intercity buses, car rental & sharing, trains and payments and ticketing under one roof. Despite the positive response from involved parties, demand for such service was low.

Team

https://youtu.be/lAOGcFtxz3c

Project partners: City of Helsinki, City of Tallinn, ITL Digital Lab, City of Vantaa, Estonian road administration, Forum Virium Helsinki LTD. Helsinki Region Transport Authority is an associated partner, and the consortium is supported by Port of Helsinki and Port of Tallinn.

The Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan for the Tallinn region was also prepared in cooperation with mobility experts of the Helsinki region.

Timeline

In the wider perspective, the mobility and traffic solutions developed in the FinEst Smart Mobility project improve the traffic fluency and air quality by reducing congestions, thus helping improve the local comfort for inhabitants and visitors alike.

Next steps

The agile nature of digital innovations in terms of a tailor-made

experience and the relatively low investment threshold compared to heavy infrastructure development is making way for further expansion of smart mobility solutions in the field of transport management.

FinEst Smart Mobility has given its partners an insight into the application of new technologies in the battling of mobility challenges, and methods with which one can involve and engage local companies to experiment with new solutions for the public good. With proper preparation and introduction of agile trials prior to the actual testing, one is able to specify the procurement framework so that the solutions of the pilot projects have a higher likelihood of incorporating more state-of-the-art technology and becoming long-lasting.

Our hope is that this project brings forth curiosity and boldness to apply agile methods in public sector procurements, as it provides an innovative yet reliable way of catering to the needs of the public while supporting the adoption of novel, co-designed solutions.

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