Lately I´ve been driven by the news from my finnish hometown Tampere, in western Finland; where the city hall will be voting whether or not to proceed with a 120 million euro loan to build a tunnel - due to the growing traffic jams.
The current tunnel issue has been the debate of this summer. Due to economic difficulties the city hall’s majority is still divided wether to pursue with it or not. Opponents favor other alternatives; opening train lines, other public transpotations or even widening the current freeway. Now - as an outsider - following this disscussion I can’t help but think of Porto as a great example. For once, there is something a northern european city hall could perharps learn from the extremely traffic jammed southern European cities.
As it happens that, Portugal is famous for its overcrowded-roadheaven, where everywhere you turn you can find a new highway or a tunnel either built or being built. Although, there is a catch. Every vehicle needs to pay a toll fee to use those roads.
Due to the current economic difficulties, the tolls have taken upon an even higher fee. As a result the national (toll free) roads are full again, and so is the (forgotten and outdated) public transpotation.
I find this matter as a very serious possibility that might happen to my home city as well. As a matter of fact, the Finnish government was disscussing the toll road fee procedure - possibly to begin within in the finnish road system starting next year.
It seems that the ‘solution’ is to get in debt now, to solve a possible future problem, without considering its serious repercussions in society, nor technological advances.
As a result of the vote, the worst scase scenario would be; The city hall would commit to a loan; a tunnel would be built and money invested for a secure new highway. Road tolls find their way in, and citizens would find driving too expensive as the gasoline prices go up. Then, a need to invest to public transpotations starts growing and when there is no more money to invest the situtation becomes tricky... and more loans will be needed.
After seeing how useless investments to a fallacious ‘road heaven’ can be made - my own opinion assures me that such a project should be rejected.
After all, I must admit how dissapointed I am about how the finns ignore the EU’s pressure to turn the green gear on. The car scene wil be extremelly different by 2030, and all current mobility projects obsolete.
P.S. I’ve never seen a real traffic jam in any finnish highway or a freeway and to consider Tampere as the Northern European most populated inland city is truly amusing.....
