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Fears of remaining outside Western European rail connection haunt Helsinki municipal planners

Xinhua, December 28, 2015 Adjust font size:

Isolated with the Baltic Sea both from Sweden and Estonia, there are increasing fears in the Finnish capital Helsinki of being "too far" from European continent particularly in ground transport.

Finnish national broadcaster Yle reported that the municipal management of Helsinki has now awakened to the relative urgency of the situation and sees a tunnel connection as a tangible option.

"Finland risks of becoming an island at the end Northeastern corner of the EU, if both Tallinn (Estonia) and Stockholm (Sweden) are connected with high speed trains to the continent and Finland has none", assistant city director Pekka Sauri told Yle News on Saturday.

European Union has granted 440 million euros(482.94 million U.S. dollars) for the planning of a high speed railroad from Tallinn, Estonia to Warsaw, Poland via Latvia and Lithuania. It would continue to Berlin, Germany. Construction will begin in five years and the train should be operational in the 2020s.

Sauri reminded that there are also plans to upgrade the train connections between Sweden and Germany via Denmark, including plans for a direct tunnel from Denmark to German north coast.

A train tunnel under the Gulf of Finland between Tallinn and Helsinki would be at least 85 km long and thus one of the longest railroad tunnels in the world. The price has been initially estimated between 9 and 13 billion euros. Sauri said a tunnel under the Gulf of Finland needs a detailed assessment now.

If built, it would not be the first "world record" in engineering connecting Finland and Estonia. During World War II, a huge underwater steel construction was built across the Gulf by Finland and Germany in an effort to make the Gulf of Finland impassable to Soviet submarines. Nicknamed as "Walrus", the Gulf of Finland closure facility was the largest in the world at the time. It was destroyed after the war.

While the future of passenger transportation remains unclear, Finland has been well advanced in plans to enhance digital communications directly to the continent.

A cable connection is being placed at the bottom of the sea. The installation work began in November 2015 and the cable is to be operational in mid 2016.

So far, most Finnish connections have gone via Sweden and have, according to local media, involved both technical and security risks.

The cost of the cable investment is small compared with the would-be sea tunnel. The 100-million-euro investment by the Finnish government and Finnish financial institutions is to bring major investments to Finland including data centers and to strengthen the potential of Finland as a data transfer hub between Asia and Western Europe.

Finland has a direct rail connection with Russia over its eastern border. The track between Helsinki and St Petersburg was modernized five years ago and offers a maximum speed of 220 km per hour. Finland shares the same rail gauge with Russia while Western Europe has a narrower gauge.

Dismissing the critical approach of an Yle interviewer, Pekka Sauri said that "Finland needs dreams". He noted both Panama Canal connecting the Pacific with the Atlantic and the English Channel Tunnel were first regarded as utopia. Endit