Skip to main content

Mobile transport information across the Finnish–Russian border

The smart transport corridor between Helsinki in Finland and St Petersburg in Russia will bring new services for passengers, car drivers and public transport. Development of the Vedia multi-service concept, led by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Vediafi, unites newly opened mobile services that will result in smoother passenger traffic across the Finnish–Russian border and enhance passenger experience and traffic safety. Vedia multi-service is a key element of the Finnish–Russian intelligent
April 16, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
The smart transport corridor between Helsinki in Finland and St Petersburg in Russia will bring new services for passengers, car drivers and public transport. Development of the Vedia multi-service concept, led by 814 VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Vediafi, unites newly opened mobile services that will result in smoother passenger traffic across the Finnish–Russian border and enhance passenger experience and traffic safety.

Vedia multi-service is a key element of the Finnish–Russian intelligent transport spearhead project which will create new intelligent transport services for passenger traffic crossing the border, in a collaboration involving authorities, research institutes and enterprises.

The first phase of services include information in road weather and driving conditions, an automatic system issuing bulletins and warnings on traffic disruption, a real-time traffic and congestion information service, and a public transport information service. This service will be available to road and railway transport users, but will later also cover other forms of transport.

For train travellers, Vedia services will become available in the fast Allegro trains between Helsinki and St Petersburg. The services will be implemented on the Finnish National Railway Company on-board wireless internet and will provide passengers with additional information on journey progress, train station bulletins, news headlines, weather information, and connecting traffic data at the destination via smart phones and mobile devices. Vedia services will be produced on board the train and so will be unaffected by poor reception, particularly in the border zone.

The pilot solution is based on open data exchange in which cooperation is being built between the authorities and enterprises in both countries. This will allow traffic and road condition information to be made available to consumers, for example, via Finland’s Rajaliikenne.fi road informatio0n service and Vedia applications. Other additions to the service will include an online translation service and public transport information that will introduce connecting traffic as part of the application. In addition Vedia’s mobile SMS payment system can be used to pay for single rail tickets within Helsinki.

A service consortium, For Vedia, has been established to implement the services, including about a dozen companies both in Finland and Russia. The implementing consortium will be managed by Vediafi.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Success of Transport for London’s real time bus information service
    October 18, 2012
    Since its launch a year ago, the UK’s Transport for London (TfL) Countdown real time bus information service has dealt with more than 620 million requests and, according to TfL, the service has made millions of journeys easier, dealing with an average of 1.6 million requests via the internet and smart phones and 36,000 requests via text each day. TfL has also recently completed the installation of 2,500 new and improved bus information roadside signs across the capital. These provide clearer amber text on
  • Study reveals in-car devices aid positive changes to driver behaviour
    December 3, 2012
    The results of a four-year study by the Field Operational Tests of Aftermarket and Nomadic devices in Vehicles (TeleFOT) Consortium were presented at a recent conference in Brussels. The study focused on the assessment of the impact of driver support functions provided by in-vehicle aftermarket and nomadic devices on driving and driver behaviour. Coordinated by the Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT) and with a budget of US$19.5 million, the four-year TeleFOT project is one of the biggest traffic IC
  • Vaisala RWS200 deployed on Aurora Smart Road
    March 20, 2018
    Vaisala is displaying its RWS200, a road weather information system that is playing a crucial role on Finland’s Aurora Smart Road, implemented by the Finnish Transport Agency, and equipped to fit research and development needs in the field of smart transport. Information on the road surface state is crucial for researching and developing automatisation, supported driving and maintenance in Arctic traffic.
  • Volvo initiates cloud-based road warning system
    March 21, 2014
    Volvo Car Group (Volvo Cars), the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket) and the Norwegian Public Roads Administration (Statens Vegvesen) are joining forces in a pilot project in which road friction information from individual cars is shared within a cloud-based system. The pilot uses 50 Volvo cars; when the test car detects an icy or slippery patch of road, the information is transmitted to Volvo Cars’ database via the mobile phone network. An instant warning is transmitted to other vehicles ap