The day before Thanksgiving, while I was already away and visiting with family, the MBTA Rail Vision team published their Peer Systems Review paper, describing a number of domestic and international commuter rail systems with detailed statistics about their service area, costs, and demographics. I was of course put out that they didn’t include Helsinki, so to remedy that, I’m presenting the same data in the same format. I unfortunately don’t have the GIS setup or databases to answer some of the questions at the same level of detail, and all the caveats in the original paper for international agency statistics apply equally to Helsinki.

Helsingin Seudun Liikenne -kuntayhtymä (HSL, Helsinki Regional Transport Authority in English) is responsible for coordinating transit service, fares, and schedules in the nine municipalities of Helsinki Region (which includes, in addition to Helsinki itself, Espoo, Vantaa, Kauniainen, Kerava, Kirkkonummi, Sipoo, Siuntio, and Tuusula). Most have historic CBDs, of which Helsinki’s is the largest in terms of both resident population and employment.

HSL operates no service of its own, but contracts with private and public operators to provide bus, metro, tram, commuter rail, and ferry services; operating subsidies come from the member municipalities and the Finnish state. VR Group currently has a monopoly on regional and intercity passenger rail service and operates the commuter rail service for HSL, some parts of which are substantially integrated with intercity service; commuter rail service is being put to public tender for the first time, with the new operator contract to start in 2021. A €1 billion project to construct a new, primarily underground rail connector to Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport opened in July, 2015.

Unless otherwise stated, information sourced to HSL/HRT comes from the 2017 Annual Report

Demographics and land use

¹OECD “city area” shown; metropolitan area data in parentheses.

²OECD average wage for entire country, conversion on PPP basis in 2015 US dollars as supplied by OECD. Regional average is believed higher.

³Deloitte Mobility Index includes the four core municipalities of the Helsinki Region: Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, and Kauniainen.

System Characteristics

⁴The four rail lines are the Coast line, the Airport Ring Line, the main line, and the Lahti line. These lines are served by a variety of local, express, short-turn, and skip-stop services; two services provide counter-rotating local service on the 30-mile-long Airport Ring Line. Three services on the main line and one service on the Lahti line are operated substantial distances outside the HSL region by VR on its own account, and one service on the Lahti line is included in HSL system maps and timetables but is entirely outside the HSL region.

⁵This figure appears to include only services operated using class Sm5 low-floor EMU rolling stock, leased by HSL from Junakalusto Oy.

⁶Excludes 20 more regional and intercity stations outside the HSL district served by R, T, D, G, and Z trains operated by VR.

⁷No information about station accessibility is available; however, all stations within the HSL district are served by at least one route using class Sm4 or class Sm5 low-floor EMUs.

⁸No information about on-time performance is published. However, published service reliability (percent of trips operated out of scheduled trips) exceeded 99.3% in 2017, short of HSL’s service reliability goal of 99.59%.

⁹Comparison is difficult because of the numerous service patterns operated on the four lines; at some major stations, local, express, and short-turn trains all arrive at the same time. All commuter trains stop at Pasila station, about 32 trains per hour peak and 12 trains per hour late night. Some distant stations have peak-only service.

Operating Characteristics

¹⁰Converted at a rate of €1.00 = $1.23.

¹¹Figures for entire HSL system, including bus, metro, tram, commuter rail, and ferry. As HSL owns no vehicles itself, operating costs include contracted service operators’ costs of capital and depreciation, as well as the cost of leasing commuter-rail trains from Junakalusto Oy.

¹²HSL has three geographic fare zones and fares are independent of mode (except for Helsinki trams). Fares shown are for single-use one-way tickets purchased at a ticket vending machine; lower prices apply for tickets purchased through a mobile app or from an on-board automated fare validator using a stored-value Travel Card.

¹³HSL reports operating expense per passenger kilometer as approximately €0.12 for the commuter rail, on par with the Helsinki Metro and significantly cheaper than bus, tram, and ferry services. In comparable US units, this would be $0.24 per passenger mile. As described in note 11 above, this includes a substantial amount of what in the US would be classified as capital costs.

Fleet Characteristics

¹⁴Includes both Junakalusto Oy-owned class Sm5 EMUs leased to HSL and VR Group-owned equipment (primarily class Sm4 EMUs) used on HSL services under contract.

¹⁵Class Sm5 EMUs only, built 2008–2017.

¹⁶On a typical peak-period train consisting of two class Sm5 EMUs with 260 seats each. Of the total, 232 seats are fixed and an additional 26 folding seats are shared with wheelchair bays and standing room. The class Sm5 is capable of operating in three-unit consists but passenger demand does not currently justify it.