The FinEst Smart Mobility project has between 2018—2020 focused on making the traffic flows more fluent in Helsinki West Harbour, in Tallinn Old City Harbour and in areas adjacent to the ports.
A more fluent mobility between Helsinki and Tallinn has been the goal of the three-year project. The Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan for the Tallinn region was also prepared in co-operation with mobility experts of the Helsinki region.
The dense ferry traffic between Helsinki and Tallinn means that the impact of traffic plans implemented on either side will be visible on both sides of the gulf. When it comes to the efficiency of the mobility and traffic control, standardising the goals in the entire twin city area would be profitable in the future as well.
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 enabled the integration of the Finnish Digitransit service into the Estonian peatus.ee service, and thus, travel chain planning over the sea in the future.
Digital solutions bring agility to traffic
In addition to smart traffic pilot projects and planning of cross-border mobility, the FinEst Smart Mobility project has produced valuable learnings from the production of innovation pilot projects and projectification in an open ecosystem. The digital solutions offer an agile alternative for investments in the urban environment and emphasise the significance of open data and cross-functional operations in terms of both user experience and the quality of the digital services. The solutions developed in the project also support multimodality and the travel chain experience in the junctions of the Finland–Estonia transport passage.
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.
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