Blog: Growth in the international traffic market is worth seizing
Author: Pertti Korhonen, CEO, Fintraffic
When you make a mobile phone call from one country to another, the connection works seamlessly. It’s also easy to transfer money from an account in one bank to an account in another bank.
These are just some examples of how digitalisation has made our everyday lives easier. Years ago, the telecommunications and banking sectors agreed on how to transfer information between different operators, and how to harness different operators’ production factors (such as mobile networks) to provide high-quality services for both consumers and businesses.
In the traffic world, we are only just taking our first steps into the widespread utilisation of data. We have not yet agreed on rules and routines for effectively sharing data between operators, coordinating different services, or seamlessly connecting the devices used by vehicles, infrastructure, service providers and customers.
This is the enormous challenge that we at Fintraffic have decided to tackle with open minds. Hundred organisations have already joined us in this mission, as they also think it’s important to create rules for a fair data economy in the traffic market. We believe that these rules will enable us to provide Finns with the best traffic and logistics services, and create new domestic and international business opportunities for companies operating in Finland.
The international traffic market will grow rapidly over the next few years. New traffic services (such as MaaS solutions), new propulsion solutions for vehicles, increased autonomy, and the continual refining of traffic condition data will all create opportunities for new business. However, this will require us to introduce and comply with rules for a fair data economy. When you are willing to share data, you will also receive information from others in return, thereby enabling the network to start generating completely new benefits.
Finland is well placed to be a pioneer in the digitalisation of traffic, and to create a world-class traffic ecosystem that develops and provides high-quality services for consumers, businesses and society as a whole. Finland should therefore act as a creator and promoter of traffic market practices in the same way it did in the telecommunications sector in the 90s.
At Fintraffic, we are doing everything we can to harness the opportunities that lie ahead. Our traffic control services for various modes of traffic form the backbone of our efforts. Traffic control will play a key role in creating a world-class, real-time situational picture of traffic events and infrastructure in Finland. This will provide Finland with important support for developing new services, preventing congestion, optimising routes and route maintenance, and influencing the percentage of people choosing various modes of traffic.
If Finland succeeds in digitalising traffic and building sufficient capabilities for coordinating the traffic ecosystem and its services, this will speed up the emergence of single-app door-to-door traffic services, and promote both transfers between different modes of traffic and capacity optimisation in goods logistics. Over the long term, this would be reflected as the emergence of genuine alternatives to private cars and greater efficiency in logistics. And at the same time, it will create new business opportunities for traffic operators both at home and abroad. As data opens up and interoperability increases, companies would also be encouraged to make considerable investments in the development of new traffic services.
Reducing the market share of private cars (in kilometres driven in passenger traffic) from its current level of 85 per cent to 80 per cent would reduce traffic emissions by 300,000 tons of CO2 per year. At the same time, households would reduce their annual motoring costs by about EUR 350 million, with motoring decreasing by 5.5 million kilometres per day. If ten per cent of these kilometres were switched from cars to bikes, the number of kilometres cycled each day in Finland would increase by 550,000, thereby bringing considerable benefits to public health.
Increasing the efficiency of goods logistics chains by only one per cent would reduce traffic emissions by 44,000 tons of CO2 and companies’ logistics costs by EUR 275 million.
The opportunities are enormous – let’s seize them together!
Pertti Korhonen
CEO
Fintraffic
