The closures of the airspace of St. Petersburg have temporarily increased traffic in Finnish airspace. There has also been a slight increase in the number of overflights, and positive developments are observable in international traffic. The total volumes of road traffic early this year remained at the same level as in the previous year despite increased fuel prices. The total volume of train traffic increased moderately in both commuter and long-distance traffic.
“The development of traffic volumes in the early part of the year demonstrates the stability of the Finnish transport system in a changing operating environment. Although the international situation has brought uncertainty to aviation, air traffic as a whole has developed positively in Finland. Changes in the use of airspace have highlighted the importance of Finland as part of the global air traffic network. It is also especially gratifying that more and more Finns are using Fintraffic’s digital services as a source of up-to-date traffic information”, says CEO Pia Julin from Fintraffic.
The traffic volume statistics published by Fintraffic for road, rail and air traffic can be viewed on our website.
Moderate growth in train traffic – slight decline in punctuality
The total volume of rail traffic increased very moderately in the beginning of the year. There was a slight increase in commuter and long-distance traffic (+0.9% and +0.8%) compared to the previous year, while freight traffic volumes (-7.4%) fell short of the same period of last year.
The punctuality of train traffic declined slightly but remained at a good level. Train punctuality was 90.8% (93.6%) in commuter traffic, 88.5% (90.2%) in long-distance traffic and 92% (92.8%) in rail freight services. Factors such as low snowfall in winter and an early spring had a positive impact on punctuality.
The amount of track work increased nationally by almost seven per cent compared to the previous year. The work for the first part of this year mainly progressed as planned without significant impacts on traffic. Low snowfall in winter made it easier to carry out maintenance work, especially in southern Finland.
Lorry traffic volumes in a slight decline
Early this year, road traffic volumes on our major roads (highways and main roads) were at the same level as in the previous year, and the total volume of traffic increased by 0.1% in January-March compared to the same period last year.
There were slight variations in different directions between vehicle categories. The volume of passenger car and van traffic increased by 0.1%, while the volume of heavy goods traffic decreased by 0.7%.
Growth in air traffic despite geopolitical challenges
The trend in aviation at the beginning of the year was cautiously positive, even though geopolitical factors continue to destabilise the operating environment. Closures of the St. Petersburg airspace have been reflected in the operations of air traffic control, as international flights have had to be redirected to Finnish or Estonian airspace. This has temporarily increased traffic volumes in Finnish airspace.
As a whole, air traffic has developed positively in the early part of this year. There has been a slight increase in the number of overflights, and there is also an observable increase in international traffic. The seasonal charter flights to Lapland decreased as expected at the end of March, and the season had an overall positive tone.
January was the busiest month ever in the use of digital services
In the first quarter of 2026, Fintraffic’s digital services attracted around 3.9 million visits, which is an increase of 44% (2.7 million Q1/2025) from the previous year. January was the busiest month ever in Fintraffic’s digital services, with services used almost 1.4 million times.
Fintraffic App is still the most popular service, accumulating some 2.8 million uses (1.8 million Q1/2025). The popularity of the app is growing steadily: it was downloaded almost 25,000 times in the first quarter of the year. Other popular services by Fintraffic include Traffic Situation, Train Departures, National Journey Planner and Feedback Channel.
A total of about 5.72 billion interface queries were made to Fintraffic’s open data interfaces for traffic data Digitraffic and Digitransit, with a total of 243 terabytes of data shared from these services. (Digitransit 4.45 billion interface queries, 68TB of data, Digitraffic 1.27 billion interface queries and 175TB of data).
Digitraffic is used to transmit real-time traffic information, such as traffic warnings and weather camera images. Digitransit contains up-to-date and comprehensive data on Finnish public transport, and it is utilised extensively by various route guides, for example.
