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Finland Transportation and Communications
Unavailable
Figure 18. Transportation System, 1986
Finland's geography and climate make transportation and
communications difficult. For centuries, coastal ports,
which
were closed by ice each winter for at least one month in
the
south and for as long as five months in the north,
provided the
only links with Europe. Internal communications, hampered
by long
distances interrupted by swamps and bogs, were likewise
paralyzed
each spring by slowly melting snows. As in most
industrialized
countries, during the postwar period newer technologies
supplanted traditional means of transport. Thus, in the
early
postwar years, truck traffic grew at the expense of rail
and
water transport, only to be displaced later by airplanes.
Traditional mail gave way to telecommunications. External
commerce still depended primarily on oceangoing ships, but
air
freight services provided an increasingly important
supplement.
The natural environment compensated somewhat for the
difficulties of climate and geography in the form of a
network of
lakes and rivers that provided an economical means of
moving
forest products downstream to processing centers and on to
ports
for export. Although trucks handled more than half of
Finland's
forest products in the late 1980s, the wood industries
still
operated some 9,200 kilometers of floatways. Internal
waterways
for general use covered another 6,100 kilometers, of which
about
70 kilometers were canals. The most important artificial
waterway, the Saimaa Canal, runs from Lake Saimaa to the
Baltic
port of Viipuri
(see
fig. 18). In 1962 the Soviet Union,
which
had annexed the waterway and the port after World War II,
granted
a long-term lease to Finland that allowed the Finns to
renovate
and to operate them.
Finland lagged behind the other Nordic countries in
developing railroads--as late as the early 1970s, Finland
continued to lay tracks. Yet by the early 1980s, the
railroads
had begun to decline in importance, and of the more than
9,000
kilometers of track, less than 6,000 kilometers of track
were in
operation (25 percent of which was electrified). The rail
network
served southern and central Finland better than the north,
and it
specialized in carrying bulk products to processing
centers and
to export ports. The railroads, almost all of which were
stateowned , had lost business and were running operating
deficits by
the mid-1980s. Finnish railroads used the same gauge as
Russian
lines (1.524 meters), which allowed easy exchanges with
Soviet
railroads but blocked shipments to Finland's Western
neighbors.
By 1987 Finland maintained about 76,000 kilometers of
roadways, of which 43,000 kilometers were paved roads and
200
kilometers were divided highways. During the first half of
the
1980s, local routes accounted for most new road
construction, as
the national highways were largely complete. Although the
highways covered most of the country, specialists reported
that
Finland would need to improve its major routes to meet
European
standards and to allow increased trade with Western Europe
during
the 1990s.
By 1987 the Finns operated about 1.7 million
automobiles,
9,000 buses, 52,000 freight trucks, 135,000 vans and
delivery
trucks, and 50,000 motorcycles. During the early 1980s,
the
number of vehicles had risen by almost 20 percent as more
and
more Finns purchased cars and motorcycles and many
companies
shifted from rail to road transport.
Finland's position on the northern shore of the Baltic,
far
from the commercial centers of Western Europe, placed a
premium
on shipping. Because harbors freeze up each winter, the
Finns
have employed a fleet of icebreakers and have equipped
many ships
with strengthened hulls, the construction of which has
become a
specialty of the metal-working industry
(see Industry
, this ch.).
The national oceangoing fleet expanded tenfold to about
2.5
million gross registered tons (GRT) between the end of
World War
II and about 1980, but it shrank thereafter to about 1.6
million
GRT. The Finnish merchant marine carried most of the
country's
trade and provided a significant source of foreign
exchange;
however, merchant shipping declined somewhat in the 1980s
because
of competition from air freight services and from foreign
shipping. In the 1980s, Finland's ports handled about 50
million
net registered tons each year, of which 60 percent were
exports.
Ships also carried a significant number of passengers, 2
million
of whom traveled by way of Helsinki.
Air transport grew rapidly in the 1970s and the 1980s.
For
passengers, domestic traffic was growing faster than
international travel, but for freight, the reverse was
true.
Affordable air fares--the lowest in Europe--contributed to
the
rapid expansion of domestic air travel. Almost 3 million
passengers and more than 50,000 tons of freight and mail
passed
through the main airport, Helsinki-Vantaa, each year.
Finland
also operated about forty smaller airports.
Two state-controlled firms, Finnair and Karair,
dominated
Finnish airways. The state owned a majority of shares in
Finnair
(founded in 1923), which maintained regular international
and
domestic service. Karair, established in 1957, was linked
to
Finnair (which owned a majority interest) and specialized
in
charter flights.
Finland's postal and telecommunications services
maintained
efficient links among the country's thinly settled
population. In
the late 1980s, the government operated about 3,600 post
offices
and 581 telegraph bureaus. Nevertheless, many rural areas
were so
sparsely inhabited that the postal carriers made
deliveries to
groups of mailboxes located at crossroads. The relatively
great
distances among settlements made telecommunications
popular; by
the late 1980s, telecommunications had become more
important than
traditional postal services. Among European states,
Finland was
unusual in maintaining a combination of public and private
telephone systems. Some fifty-eight companies provided
services
in local communities, while the Public Telecommunications
Agency
(PTA) enjoyed a monopoly on long-distance services.
Starting in
the mid-1980s, local companies began to compete in the
lucrative
data transmission field, a move that put them in
competition with
the PTA's long-distance services. Observers expected that
pending
legislation would effectively deregulate the
telecommunications
market.
Data as of December 1988
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