European Railroad Discussion > Finland: Big News for Citizens of Tampere

It is a great day for the people living in Tampere in the middle Finland and cities and towns around it: for the first time travellers can choose between buses and trains, with the same ticket. Earlier these modes have had different ticketing systems. While the change may seem indeed small and irrelevant, it is actually not.

-> By using train the passengers save for example travelling from Nokia, 10 kilometers / 6 miles out of Tampere, 20 minutes out of the travel time of 30 minutes by bus (incredibly slow bus riding...)
-> The tracks radiating 5 ways from Tampere can now be used efficiently for a mix of public transportation.

At first the operator will be VR, whose rolling stock is utilized. The passengers can even board VR longer distance IC2 trains for local travels in addition to regional trains. There are also talks about adding trains for heavy commuting times from 2013 to 2015, once the system is tried and better organized, and most importantly, properly funded for additional traffic. From 2015 plans exist for funding additional trains, which means the trains should be ordered in the early 2013. Volumes are initially so low, that 3 moduled Flirt / GTW2/6 trains or 4 moduled Coradia Nordics should be able to handle this. Hope the manufacturers will be busy offering their trains even for this smaller market. It is said that VR (as currently a monopoly) would own the trains but I doubt this, since in many as developed and even very much less developed countries the trains are owned by local public or private bodies and run by who ever makes the best deal.

In the picture the most likely candidate for initial use for additional traffic: The VR class Sm2 curves through the snow in Kauklahti, Espoo, Finland. Picture by Hannu. The class Sm2 as an obsolete construction will be mostly out of traffic in the Helsinki metropolitan area, so the decisions of Tampere area might provide temporarily more work for the 50 unit fleet.

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That is good news. How far will the trains travel from Tampere? You mentioned Nokia; but will they go all the way to Rauma? It will certainly make the hourly meeting of trains from all five lines even more interesting. Gerry

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Good question, and a _very_ interesting picture Gerry with all the train at the "hub meeting"! Like discussed in the summer, some must have been late while others a little early.

The long distance and regional trains will still be there, plus some to cope with the ever rising demand for train services (I think this rise is a global phenomenon reflecting the development of the railways as a competitive form of travelling). Plus there will be the locals running no further than just 50 kilometers / 35 miles each 5 - 6 ways. So the capacity will rise something like 50% at the hub meetings, meaning that since there is no room for more tracks at the Tampere junction passenger station, it will be even more crowded. This might push the wolve's (on the right) and guinea pig's (extreme right and left) parking somewhere else.

As what comes to Rauma, we still have VR monopoly _for_the_moment_. Running to Rauma would be lucrative business to any private enterprise, and hopefully will be started in cooperation with Tampere investments, but as long as VR has made its mind for not running any passenger services there, this beautiful and interesting little city swarming tourists in the summer will stay without proper connections to the rest of Finland. I think we need to see what happened in Sweden: opening the rail network lead to lots of new connections, new structures and lots more traffic. So while monopolized Finland is struggling to keep up with the services (outside the main lines like Tampere), Sweden is struggling to build quick enough new line capacity for all the new traffic.

Yes, very interesting picture.
I hope that there will be a new traffic to let us make more interesting photos :)