Helsinki placed first in a global mobility report – Forum Virium helps in making Helsinki the top Smart Mobility city in the world

Artikkelikuva: Helsinki placed first in a global mobility report – Forum Virium helps in making Helsinki the top Smart Mobility city in the world

The Urban Mobility Readiness Index report by the Oliver Wyman Forum and the University of California ranked 65 cities in different continents based on their preparedness to face future mobility challenges. In 2023, Helsinki took the first place.

Mobility’s future readiness has been measured since 2019, applying a total of 56 indicators. The review includes the following areas: social impact, infrastructure, innovations, the efficiency of the system and the attractiveness of the market. Helsinki has been near the top of the list all along and has steadily increased its ranking. After placing third in 2022, Helsinki jumped to the first place of the smart mobility report in 2023. 

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Forum Virium, the City of Helsinki’s innovation company, has been promoting the City’s smart mobility solutions and determinedly preparing for the future for several years now. Helsinki has been ranked high in various evaluations and has been one of the world’s most famous smart mobility cities since 2014, when the Mobility as a Service ideology created in Helsinki spread across the world. 

The aim of smart mobility is to use technology to make urban mobility smoother and safer, reduce emissions and create preconditions for new business. 

Smart mobility innovations in Helsinki

Programme Manager of Forum Virium’s smart mobility, Minna Torppa, states that one of the reasons for Helsinki’s success is the agile use of the city as a test platform for new solutions and fast pilots. She also lists other strengths of Helsinki in the field of smart mobility.

Preparing for the future requires testing by using simulations. Helsinki is one of the world’s pioneers in the development of the digital twin of mobility. The digital twin provides a virtual representation of the traffic system and its environment and conditions. It is a set of multiple data sources, the purpose of which is to create links between different systems and their data content.

The report also praises Helsinki for preparing for the autonomous transport of the future. Robot buses, now trending around the world, have been piloted in Forum Virium’s projects years ago. The world’s first autonomous on-demand boat, Callboats, was selected on the list of best innovations of 2023 of the Time magazine.  

Helsinki is internationally a leading city in urban air mobility, and the city is systematically building its own urban air mobility model based on the experiences gained through Forum Virium Helsinki’s various projects. The drone projects of Forum Virium have promoted the commissioning of emergency medical drones and rescue drones, in particular. 

“Automated urban air mobility will be just as revolutionary as the first flight of the Wright brothers,” says Christina Suomi, the unit manager of the Urban Environment Division of Helsinki. 

Autonomous package delivery robots and work machinery – such as the world’s first autonomous street sweeping robot and maintenance robots – are also part of Forum Virium’s smart mobility expertise.  

The report also praises Helsinki’s contribution to a well-functioning transport infrastructure and charging infrastructure for electric cars. New cycling lanes and rail networks are constantly being built in the city. Forum Virium studies, among other subjects, the efficiency and safety of cycling as part of transport data collection, using tools such as LiDARs.

Helsinki has around 2,000 public charging points for electric cars, some 200 of them along the streets. Forum Virium has made regional vehicle register data available to the city in order to improve street-side charging in line with the demand.

Smart mobility studies and develops all forms of mobility, from walking to cycling, from cars to water transport and from urban air mobility to electric scooters, without forgetting logistics services. Key elements of smart mobility include the collection and analysis of traffic data, as well as traffic control and optimisation, which also enable the development of autonomous mobility services.

Photo: Vesa Laitinen

Additional information

Programme Director, Smart Mobility Minna Torppa

Minna Torppa
Programme Director, Smart Mobility
+358 40 556 2125
minna.torppa@forumvirium.fi

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