Functional logistics and good accessibility ensure the safety, well-being and smooth everyday life of Finns. With sufficient road funding, we build and maintain a transport system that meets our needs, which ensures both crisis resistance and growth. In order for the bus network to serve in the best way, we need a more ambitious transport policy than before.
Our goal
- Let's base the transport policy on an ambitious vision of modernizing Finland's main roads and railways. We also need a long-term plan to implement the vision.
- We are actively looking for new financing models for large highway projects outside the budget framework. The solutions can be found in life cycle and fund models, as well as the proceeds from the sale of state assets, which should be used to capitalize infrastructure investments, supplementing them with private financing if necessary.
- We will also ensure funding that is sufficient for the budget framework, resistant to the increase in cost levels, for both transport development investments and basic road maintenance - otherwise we will not be able to catch up with the tightening repair deficit.
- In a country that depends on its accessibility, the role of transport policy is strategic, so in the future the Government Council and the Prime Minister must also play a central role in it.
- Let's make transport policy an EU priority, use EU funding more systematically than before and intensify Nordic cooperation in the development of transport.
- Let's reduce the environmental disadvantages of infrastructure construction by removing obstacles hidden in regulation and zoning and by reforming procurement procedures so that builders' solutions to reduce emissions and disturbance, increase biodiversity and promote the circular economy become mainstream.
- We will increase the knowledge base on the dynamic impact of transport investments in society by increasing research related to the topic and creating a multidisciplinary expertise cluster around it.
- The transport tax and payment practices will be reformed to reflect the reduction in the driving force of transport.
The role of functioning infrastructure in society
We can afford to raise the ambition of transport policy considerably, because the importance of infrastructure to our well-being is great and growing.
Sparsely populated Finland is on the outskirts of Europe, far from the export industry's main market areas. Production is spread over a wide country. By developing and renovating the transport network, we increase the competitiveness of business life and the smoothness of everyday life, despite our challenging starting points.
In the coming years, strategic investment decisions in the transport network and other infrastructure will be needed more than before to strengthen investors' confidence, maintain growth and ensure the industrial investments of the green transition. For example, large investment projects such as one-hour trains have a strategic and long-term impact on workforce mobility, the conditions for economic growth and traffic emissions.
The role of infrastructure is also emphasized by geopolitics. We depend on sea connections to European ports, but security risks in the Baltic Sea have increased. Security of supply, operational security of companies and effective national defense require the strengthening of the land connection to the rest of the Nordic region and a reexamination of the transport needs of Eastern Finland.
Key reform needs 2020–2050
We need an ambitious, decades-long vision for the modernization of main roads and railways. The goal must be four-lane and two-track on main highways, timely and adequate maintenance, utilization of digitalization, and a comprehensive distribution infrastructure for clean operating forces. The vision must take into account both internal and external accessibility of the country.
Today's traffic challenges cannot be solved with old fins. Rail funding has been considerably undersized in the first decades of the 2000st century. As a result, the repair debt of our bus network is already four billion euros. The debt affects everyone's everyday life, traffic safety and the punctuality of transport.
In order to correct the situation, a correction movement is needed for the share of road funding in the budget framework. In addition, financing models outside the framework must be sought for large development projects. In order to get the projects off the ground in a timely manner, starting decisions must be encouraged to be made conditional, so that project planning can continue in the background while funding is still being arranged. The hoe will be put in the ground when the financing is secured.
Clarifying our own transport vision and steadily promoting our own projects also improve our conditions for a more systematic and greater utilization of EU funding.
In addition to the transport infrastructure, a look at the municipal infrastructure
In addition to traffic infrastructure, the basic pillars of well-being are functional and cost-effective municipal infrastructure: streets, water supply and energy networks, sports and green areas. Procurement know-how and seamless cooperation in infrastructure projects play a key role in ensuring Kuntainfra's operational reliability. Read more about the topic From INFRA ry's website.
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