FINLAND: A 7 km extension of the Helsinki metro network west from Matinkylä to Kivenlahti within the neighbouring city of Espoo opened on December 3.
Espoo Mayor Jukka Mäkelä and Helsinki Mayor Juhana Vartiainen arrived at the opening ceremony at Espoonlahti station via the new extension.
The wholly underground extension was completed at a cost of €1·16bn. ‘The timelines and costs of the construction of the metro extension were kept in line with the decisions of Espoo City Council’, said Olli Isotalo, Deputy Mayor for Urban Environment and Chairman of Länsimetro Oy joint venture of the Helsinki and Epsoo municipalities which owns and manages the metro infrastructure west of Ruoholahti.
‘In the existing areas of Kaitaa, Soukka, Espoonlahti and Kivenlahti development will be concentrated around the stations and services will improve. A completely new residential area will be created in Finnoo.’
The journey time on the extension is 10 min. There are five stations, with Finnoo’s 78 m escalator being the longest in Finland. ‘The stations are architecturally attractive, Finnish architectural expertise at its best, and serve as business cards for the areas’, said Länsimetro Oy CEO Ville Saksi.
Construction of the Länsimetro project started at the end of 2009, and the first 13·5 km section from Ruoholahti to Matinkylä opened in November 2017.
As part of the project CAF was awarded a €39·9m contract in February 2020 to supply a further five four-car M300 metro trainsets and provide spare parts over their expected 40-year life. CAF had previously supplied 20 M300 trainsets in 2016-17.
