Grand new gateway to Finland
The route to the Nordic market now runs through Vuosaari Harbour. The new harbour, which will soon celebrate its first birthday, represents a major triumph for Helsinki’s inhabitants, economy and environment.
The opening ceremonies of Vuosaari Harbour in November 2008 formed a glorious occasion. After decades of preparation and planning, the project was finally complete.
It's no exaggeration to describe this as a historic moment: this was the largest single logistics investment project ever undertaken in Finland. Vuosaari handles about 30 percent of Finland's foreign trade and 40 percent of its shipping. The new harbour is of great importance for transport, housing and the environment in the Helsinki metropolitan area.
The harbour project also represents Finland's response to international competition in the Baltic Sea region. Vuosaari is the fastest, safest, best-functioning harbour in the region.
Goodbye to lorries in the city
The need for a new harbour in Helsinki had been obvious for a long time. The former goods harbour was built in Sörnäinen on the eastern edge of the city centre in the 1860s, with another harbour built at Jätkäsaari, at the opposite end of the city, in the early 1900s.
Back then, Helsinki was a small town with a population in the tens of thousands. During the 20th century, the Helsinki area grew into a metropolis with a million inhabitants as Finland became an industrialised country dependent on foreign trade.
The location of goods harbours adjacent to the city centre eventually became insufferable in many ways. The goods traffic to and from the harbours placed an excessive strain on the city's streets, inhabitants and environment.
Logistics arrangements grew difficult and expensive. The harbours required large expanses of land that would have been far more valuable for homes and offices. The completion of Vuosaari, about 15 kilometres east of Helsinki, was a great relief.
Direct link
Dwarfed by towering stacks of containers, a lorry arrives to be unloaded.
Vuosaari Harbour offers excellent transport connections. The sea lane leading in runs almost entirely straight, making navigation easy and safe.
The harbour is convenient to the Helsinki ring road, which in turn provides access to all the main road transport corridors. A tunnel services the harbour, allowing some 3,600 lorries daily to bypass the city centre. Also, an increasing volume of goods transports is being handled by rail using a new line that branches off from the main line at Kerava, some 30 kilometres north of Helsinki.
Respect for people and environment
The harbour project was highly challenging. Vuosaari is one of the most rapidly growing residential regions in Helsinki and boasts extensive green areas, some of which are protected under the European Natura network. Protected species of water birds nest in an area that is home to rare biotopes and plant species.
These values were taken into account when designing and building the harbour. The project was preceded by a thorough environmental impact assessment that had a major influence on the planning and construction of transport links to the harbour.
In order to protect the natural environment and culturally and historically valuable landscapes, land connections to the harbour were placed in tunnels plunging down as far as 60 metres under the surface, insulated against sound and vibrations.
The harbour was dredged, bringing up contaminated soil that was then rehabilitated – a legacy from the shipyard that once occupied the site. At the new harbour waste water, waste oil and other ship waste are all processed in compliance with environmental regulations.
No construction work was carried out above ground during the bird nesting season.
New neighbourhoods pop up
Workers stand by to supervise as a crane moves a shipping container.
The areas formerly occupied by goods harbours and rail lines are being renovated to make way for homes and offices. New neighbourhoods will emerge in Jätkäsaari, Sörnäinen and Keski-Pasila, all near the city centre.
The new districts will offer some relief from Helsinki's chronic housing shortage, eventually providing homes for some 45,000 Helsinkians and tens of thousands of jobs – within range of good public transport.
These developments will have considerable environmental impact. They will decrease the need to construct new housing districts in the suburbs, which would translate into 73 million more kilometres of driving each year.
In turn, forests around the city can be preserved, and new parks and a network of recreation paths can be built on the waterfront in former harbour areas.
Once all this is finished, some 15 to 30 years from now, Helsinki will be a more varied, larger, more beautiful and more urban city – with clean lungs.
By Salla Korpela, September 2009
See also:
Hanging out at the new harbour » : Be careful of 12-metre spiders as we tour Vuosaari Harbour
Vuosaari Harbour in a nutshell
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