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.
The ferry connection between Helsinki and Tallinn is one of the busiest in the world with over 8 million annual passengers. A large proportion of these passengers are served by the connection between Helsinki’s West Harbour and Tallinn’s Old City Harbour. The ferry traffic produces a significant amount of emissions, noise and other negative impacts in the harbours and cities.
Objective
The objective of the FinEst Smart Mobility project was to tackle this constantly growing problem with smart mobility solutions. The project focused on smoother mobility chains combining different forms of transport in both the countries’ internal and cross-border transport services by planning and testing ICT-based solutions. These solutions successfully reduced transportation times for both people and goods.
The smoother mobility of both people and goods reduced carbon dioxide and noise pollution in the harbours and cities. A cross-border perspective was applied to ensures that the services were truly user-oriented and to improve cross-border traffic planning.
Duration, partners and funding
- The project was coordinated by the City of Helsinki, with the other project partners being the City of Tallinn, ITL Digital Lab, the City of Vantaa, Forum Virium Helsinki, the Estonian Road Administration and Helsinki Region Transport. In addition to this, the project was supported by the Port of Helsinki and the Port of Tallinn.
- The three-year (1 September 2016–31 August 2019) project was funded by the Interreg CentralBaltic
- The project had a total budget of EUR 1.8 million, of which Forum Virium Helsinki’s share was EUR 154,219.63.
The role of Forum Virium Helsinki
The project carried out five smart mobility pilots as an innovative public procurement between the years 2017 and 2019. Forum Virium Helsinki was responsible for the planning of the pilot procurements in 2016–2017. This planning included the identification and description of user needs with the help of service design, the specification of APIs and five agile innovation pilots in Helsinki and Tallinn, which explored the possibilities of future technologies and business models as part of procurements. More information on the pilots is available here.
Furthermore, Forum Virium facilitated the duplication of good solutions by recruiting an expert who helped with the deployment of the Digitansit service in Estonia. More information on the deployment of Digitransit in Estonia is available here.
Benefits for Helsinki
The project served to further strengthen the strong cooperation between Helsinki and Tallinn. In addition to this, the project created solutions that can be used to monitor the traffic of Helsinki’s West Terminal in real time in greater detail than before. The project included a total of five smart mobility pilots, of which some, such as the real-time ferry traffic monitoring, have also continued after the project.
The innovation and smart mobility pilots have facilitated the achievement of the City of Helsinki’s 2035 carbon neutrality objectives by creating new competence in regard to the utilisation of pilots and the deployment of their results.
Project materials
The project website and all the material published in the project are available at FinEst Smart Mobility.
The project in the media
“Traffic between Helsinki and Tallinn being improved with smart pilots, Rakennuslehti, 31 January 2017
“Smart services are making the journey to Tallinn smoother”, Insinööri-lehti, 5 June 2017
“Relief for the Jätkäsaari traffic gridlock? – Traffic congestion in the world’s busiest passenger port now being tackled with smart solutions”, Ilta-Sanomat, 29 January 2019
Photo: Matti Tirri, City of Helsinki media bank
Further information