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 The West’s trade with Russia has declined dramatically, and Western logistics operators have largely withdrawn from Russia.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.

Drones will deliver a parcel to your home and assist in farming and construction. These are some of the applications where developments will be brisk 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.

Uncertainty in the economy, the now-established trend for hybrid working, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are still impacting road traffic volumes in Finland. During the last quarter of 2022, there were notably fewer passenger cars and heavy-duty vehicles on highways and main roads than a year earlier. In contrast, Lapland had its busiest Christmas season ever in terms of air traffic. All these insights were gleaned from Traffic Management Company Fintraffic’s October–December statistics.

ITS World, the Intelligent Transportation Systems World Congress, is the world’s largest single event in the intelligent traffic sector. It brings together world leaders, professionals, policymakers, researchers and private-sector representatives. This year’s ITS World Congress was held in Los Angeles, USA on 18–23 September 2022, and its theme was “Transformation by Transportation”.

The rapid growth in road traffic levelled off during the early summer. On the railways, the number of freight trains has decreased considerably on the previous year. Even though air traffic picked up during the early summer, traffic volumes are still clearly lower than before the pandemic. All these insights were gleaned from Traffic Management Company Fintraffic’s April–June statistics.

Improvement of traffic services for businesses and households received a boost with the adoption of an open-source Rulebook by operators in the sector. The goal here is to promote service development in the industry, in both goods and passenger traffic, with means such as data sharing. The traffic sector is thus at last following the lead of the banking and telecommunications sectors, which have for a long time now had interoperable customer services in place.

Whereas the pandemic caused an unprecedented reduction in traffic in 2020, the lifting of restrictions in 2021 was reflected as an increase in various modes of transport. Demand for traffic data is also higher than ever before.