Finding public transport services, timetables and routes is now easier than ever in Finland. The route planner opas.matka.fi was updated on 30 March 2023. The route planning services of other public transport service providers will also improve, as they mainly use data from the same backend system, which is now even more comprehensive for Finland as a whole.

As of autumn 2023, Fintraffic Road will be utilising Waze’s data in traffic information displays to streamline traffic flow on Ring Road III. Fintraffic is involved in the “Waze for cities” programme, in which partners can utilise traffic data collected by Waze and also share their own data with Waze.

Tender for a national aggregated database service

A survey conducted by Fintraffic indicates that there is a great need for centralised traffic data. Fully comprehensive data on traffic in urban street networks is not available as yet – for this reason, the real-time situational picture of traffic provided by navigators and map services, for instance, is often incomplete. Now, Fintraffic invites municipalities, contractors, service providers and IT system suppliers to come on board and share data to streamline traffic for everyone.

Russia’s war of aggression has also had significant consequences for logistics in the Baltic Sea region. The West’s trade with Russia has declined dramatically, and Western logistics operators have largely withdrawn from Russia. In a sense, you could therefore say that Finland is once again logistically alone in the north-east of Europe. The collapse of Finnish trade with the East also means that maritime transport accounts for an even larger proportion of our foreign trade, further increasing the island effect.

Route planner search functions will be faster and more versatile thanks to the introduction of a next-generation routing engine. The engine will initially be deployed in the Tampere route planner on Wednesday 22 February. It will be added to the HSL and national (Matka.fi) route planners later in the spring.

Fintraffic is continually developing its services to enable smooth journeys and provide a real-time situational picture of traffic. The usability of ferry traffic data in national services was improved at the turn of the year. It is now easier to avoid unnecessary waiting time, as you can see when a ferry will dock. This new information about ferries rounds out the comprehensive real-time situational picture of Finnish traffic provided by Fintraffic.

Together with the Fraunhofer Center for Maritime Logistics and Services (CML), Fintraffic’s Vessel Traffic Services has started a research project in which Finland’s VTS’ marine VHF traffic will be developed in the upcoming years utilizing automatic speech recognition. In the future, the speech recognition system utilizing artificial intelligence will convert talk radio traffic into text form in real time for Fintraffic’s Vessel Traffic Centres. This will support the correct interpretation of messages, particularly in abnormal situations.

In the future, drones will deliver parcels to your home and assist in farming and construction. These are some of the applications where developments will be rapid once European ground rules and safe airspace practices (U-space) are established for unmanned aircraft systems and future aircraft. Advancements in this field are driven, for instance, by the need to reduce emissions from transport and logistics and by the opportunities offered by digitalisation.