In Finland the long distances within the country and to central Europe, large sparsely populated areas, the gateway position between the EU and Russia, and the northern location of the country are among the factors behind the problem areas in Finnish transport. Capacity problems are frequent in the Helsinki area. In other parts of the road network, capacity problems are concentrated in summer weekends. The shift into the information society has given rise to increasing demand for all types of information services. This increase has been especially notable for information about transport modes and networks. In Finland, the increasing demand has been largely due to the highly sophisticated and advanced information and telecommunications infrastructure, which fully covers most parts of the country. The Finnish transport telematics applications have been tailored for these special conditions. Finland has primarily been building telematics platforms enabling mobile and radio or TV based services. Roadside information systems such as VMS are used at critical locations.
Abstract