Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2013 | Page 31

Metro: The Making Of

M

etro has been a part of the urban
DNA of the Helsinki Metropolitan
Region since 1982 which was the
year the original metroline started operations. Running from west to east, the line
has been expanded many times since.
The extension of the metroline to Espoo has been on the table from the very beginning, and the development of the public
transport system from Helsinki to the west
has been studied on numerous occasions
over the years. Still, nothing happened for
a quarter of a century.
Finally, the project planning for the
west metro was launched in 2007 and completed in 2008. The Espoo City Council ap-

proved the proposal for the underground city
plan enabling construction in January 2009
and Helsinki decided on the underground
plan in November 2009.
Construction of the west metro began in Ruoholahti in November 2009,
where a metro plan extending from Ruoholahti to Salmisaari shore already existed. An
existing maintenance tunnel in Ruoholahti
was used for excavation towards Salmisaari.
Excavation work began in Espoo and
in Lauttasaari in Helsinki in the summer
2010.
The excavation will be concluded in
2013, and the focus shifts to the building
of th