Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2013 | Page 28

Break on Through
to the Other Side

With the launch only a couple of years away,
Espoo is putting the ‘metro’ in metropolis
Taking the metro from Helsinki to Espoo was a distant dream not so long ago,
but right now, one can almost picture the launch of the western expansion line.
After all, the new metro line will kick off at the end of 2015.

A

historical landmark was passed on 22
November, 2012, as the Helsinki and
Espoo tunnels met at the border between the cities, under the sea. Both Mayor
Jukka Mäkelä from Espoo and Mayor Jussi
Pajunen from Helsinki were present to witness the momentous occasion. The uniting
of the tunnels caps a stellar year which has
seen the excavation of the tunnels proceed
at rapid pace, reports Matti Kokkinen, Managing Director of Länsimetro Oy.
“Currently, we have completed 72 percent of the excavation effort in the tunnels,
meaning 20 kilometres.” During the last 12
months, the tunnel teams have covered a distance of 13.5 kilometres, even surpassing the
target of one kilometre per month.

26 Nordicum

The total length of the metro tunnels
of the western expansion line is 28 kilometres – or rather, there are two tunnels with a
length of 14 km each. As it stands, the metro project is the biggest single infrastructure undertaking in Finland today – and an
extremely high-profile case which is observed with a keen eye by also international parties.

Starting the Stations
The tunnelling will be concluded in 2013,
but Kokkinen says that the focus is already
starting to shift to building of the stations. A
lot of details go into this demanding work:
for example, the stations will be fitted with

56 different electrical systems, from lighting to track power supply and smoke detection systems.
In addition to the stations, excavation
work will be carried out for fifteen vertical
shafts designed for emergency exit, pressure
equalisation, ventilation and smoke extraction. Nine work tunnels have been designed
for construction and maintenance work.
The last eight months of the project
have been reserved for the test drives, with
the metro line’s external areas, such as escalators, platform areas, station buildings etc.
being completed simultaneously.
“We want to have the metro stations
standing by and ready to go by the autumn
of 2015,” says Kokkinen.