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an ticket but no matter what language you re speaking metro means metro the helsinki metro was the newest of the nordic countries three metro systems the smallest and the least used at least until i remembered that denmark is also a nordic country and that by opening the copenhagen metro in 2002 denmark ruined everything but i m not here to compare so crudely i ve never even been to any of the other ones riding it was the first chance i ve had to evaluate rapid transit in a country outside the anglosphere some things caught my eye some things made me wonder and some things i d never even considered let alone see before but in the end every metro is meant to move people incidentally a note between taking the notes for this project and writing this post the near mythical länsimetro extension opened taking service west to espoo and adding eight new stations to the map as much as i d like to incorporate the new bits into this work flying from toronto to helsinki is a bit expensive having a system update itself while i m still evaluating it isn t something i ve ever had to worry about for one of these but i feel like it s appropriate here out of all the metro systems i ve touched on in this series the helsinki metro took me further than all of them system a train crosses the vuosaari bridge near rastila station bound for the western end of the line the helsinki metro is the northernmost rapid transit system in the world and unless reykjavik gets ambitious that record isn t likely to fall any time soon its northernmost station mellunmäki sits at 60 degrees 14 minutes north but you d never know it just standing on the platform there it s simple straightforward unpretentious much like the network as a whole finland isn t part of scandinavia but i can see echoes of that clean no nonsense scandinavian design in the shape of the metro at the same time there s an appealing roughness to it exemplified to me by stone strewn trackbeds that look like what you d find on a regular surface railway european systems tend to have a reputation for complexity look at the multicoloured spaghetti plates of london paris or berlin but the helsinki metro is easy to wrap your head around even if you can t tell the difference between finnish and quenya it s shaped rather like a tuning fork with trains running on two services m1 and m2 but between tapiola in the west and itäkeskus in the east there s a substantial service overlap all trains service rautatientori connected to helsinki central station and one of the city s gateways to the rest of the world and the monolithic kamppi centre a bit of a change from when i was there when the overlap ended at kamppi and only half the trains continued on to ruoholahti which was the westernmost point in the system for twenty four years it reminded me of boston s blue line with one end of the line still in the central city to be honest speaking as an anglophone the most complex part of the helsinki metro was getting the names straight names like rautatientori were easy for me to stumble over with my english language brain and i often found the stations swedish names easier to remember but that will only take memory so far while kamppi s swedish name is kampen not much of a stretch a lot of these stations are named not for streets but neighbourhoods with actual meaningful names to an english speaker ruoholahti and gräsviken may look like they have no relation at all but they both mean the same thing roughly grass bay helsinki s nature as a bilingual city makes it clear why the stations were named like this but it s an interesting counterpoint to the other bilingual city metro i ve covered the montreal metro if helsinki s naming policy was used there côte vertu station might be known in english as virtue coast in the interest of keeping things straightforward i ll use the finnish station names throughout this article no what s really striking about the helsinki metro is that more so than a lot of other systems i ve used it feels almost like a system of wormholes from what i understand helsinki didn t start developing in earnest beyond its 19th century core until the 1970s and it shows take sörnäinen station only a few stops away from the central railway station deep enough in the core to be connected to helsinki s streetcar network two minutes east puts you at kaisatama an infill station surrounded by what feels like a completely new urban district under construction two minutes past that takes you to kulosaari which serves a leafy green island with a quiet suburban feel it s a significant difference from toronto where subway lines built under former streetcar routes gives a certain continuity to the shape of the city and where big divergences come mainly from past city boundaries or line extensions helsinki central station rautatientori and kaivokatu looking east if only i d thought to take this picture on a day that wasn t overcast the metro is well integrated with the rest of helsinki s transit infrastructure from rautatientori for example you can catch a ring rail service to the airport one of the commuter trains that reach across much of southern finland or long distance trains to rovaniemi or even to russia seven of helsinki s streetcar lines serve rautatientori as well connected to the underground station by a transferway in the median of kaivokatu similar to the transferway that existed at yonge and bloor in toronto before the construction of the bloor danforth subway every station from ruoholahti to sörnäinen is served by streetcars and beyond them bus connections are available the level of integration between services is closer to vancouver s style than toronto s though whether transferring to a streetcar or a bus from a metro station there were fare paid zone lines in between incidentally one issue about that transferway it s not entirely prepared for the sudden drenching rain that seems to be no stranger to helsinki because otherwise my encounter with it during my time there must have been an extremely lucky roll hell if there s more than one streetcar waiting at the stop and yours is the one parked behind the one in front of the shelters you d better be ready to get wet nevertheless this integration helps ensure that a lot of people use the metro in 2016 it carried 64 1 million passengers in a service area with a metropolitan population of 1 4 million or 45 7 passengers per person per year this is close to toronto s figure of 51 3 passengers per person per year it s not a system that s easy to get lost in and with only nine stations not served by both lines if you do take a wrong turn it s easy to correct it in my experience the helsinki metro didn t demand much cognitive effort to get around it was only when i was aiming for mellunmäki or vuosaari that i ever had to pay attention to where i was going at all and that s one of the critical tests of a transit system people have enough to worry about in their lives without having to negotiate a maze of a metro still if you need some help finding your way you won t lack for information this wasn t the first time i d been on a system that used more than one language but in many places the helsinki metro is trilingual beyond the translated station names the signage is provided in finnish swedish and english i even saw one or two that were quadrilingual with russian being added into the mix but these tended to be of the danger do not touch variety you can get around easily while knowing barely a word of finnish because i did and i do though i d recommend at least anteeksi because it s better to excuse yourself if you have to navigate a crowd you ll likely also pick up kielletty within the first twenty four hours considering how often it shows up in signage my only regret is that while an english speaker can tease an understandable meaning out of the metro s swedish signage swedish doesn t play by the same pronunciation rules kulosaari s swedish name is brändö but no matter how much you might want it to be otherwise it only has electric lights and not electrolytes stations daylight and shadow meet on the rastila station platform i have my suspicions that if i do ever end up accidentally killing myself it ll probably be in a subway station rushing for a train see in toronto a lot of the system is still not only grounded in a mid century aesthetic but a mid century sense of what s feasible and what wasn t easily feasible in the 1960s were next train countdown timers when i first arrive at my station the only sense i have of an incoming train is that subtle shift in air pressure and a whispering breeze coming from below the sort of information asymmetry that leads me to take the stairs two at a time sometimes i hit the platform just as the train s pulling in sometimes with just enough time for the train s doors to close in my face and sometimes the wind was just an eastbound train pulling in the point is that i don t know and the longer i do it for the greater my odds of missing a step and breaking my neck that wasn t the case in helsinki and not only because there i was a tourist with no demands on my time but i ll get to that with the november 2017 opening of the first phase of the länsimetro extension there are now twenty five stations on the helsinki metro with another five under construction from matinkylä in the west to mellunmäki and vuosaari in the east in august only sixteen of them were open and i visited all of them between them the stations make a good introduction to design philosophies of the last thirty five years from the subterranean entry plaza at rautatientori to the bright uplifting combination of earth and sky at rastila and the cave like nature of ruoholahti you won t find any of toronto s mid century washroom aesthetic here nor the iso standard outer city metro station there s no architectural sameness and aside from herttoniemi none of them struck me as ugly most of the stations are either underground and where they re underground they tend to be deep underground or on the surface the main exception is kalasatama an elevated station that stands three or so storeys over a construction zone that looks like it ll be a hyper modern glass and steel neighbourhood in a couple of years kalasatama is also one of only two side platform stations an artifact of it being an in fill station built around existing rail the other itäkeskus serves three tracks from its two platforms as it s where the northern and southern branches diverge in keeping with its centrality rautatientori was my introduction to the system and my first response was amazement at the sheer scale of the place with its platform level having as much space available as half a dozen toronto stations to a degree the same is true of the other central city stations with kamppi ruoholahti and helsingin yliopisto in particular sharing this design ethic feeling less like built environments and more like natural caves that were converted into stations as cities with metro systems go helsinki isn t that large but these stations could easily accommodate morning crowds at bloor yonge and still have room for a symphony of buskers there s a good if sobering reason for this openness and it doesn t have anything to do with planning ahead for future demand patterns these stations were meant to double as attack shelters after all the system first opened in 1982 one year before the world nearly stumbled into nuclear war twice and the soviet union was then less than a hundred kilometres away still this gives them a wide open welcoming feeling that i ve rarely experienced underground even before i entered rautatientori proper i was impressed it reminded me strongly of the montreal metro maybe that feeling of openness combined with a lot of concrete its main entrance is in a sunken plaza beneath the railway station surrounded by retailers with enough space to keep rush hour crows flowing what s more important both here and elsewhere is that there s no need to rush ahead without knowing what s coming because the system tells you what s coming the main entrance hall of rautatientori and a giant digital billboard with english language advertising flanking that advertisement not entirely readable thanks to my phone s camera are eighteen minutes of train arrival times there s going to be one bound for ruoholahti in a minute then a vuosaari bound in three and another making the trip west in four with the length of those escalators i d be hard pressed to make it down to the platform in under sixty seconds you ll find similar signs outside the other stations complemented by screens above the platforms themselves counting down the next two trains arrival times plenty of systems do this now but helsinki s way stands out because it s optimized for clarity and information in toronto the next train arrival timer is smashed down into the bottom tenth of a tv screen that s otherwise dominated by news weather and advertisements and that s if there s one of those screens at your end of the platform in helsinki i always knew what i was getting into even waiting around was an opportunity to let off stress because the helsinki metro s internet infrastructure is like nothing i ve ever seen not only was its easily accessible no login needed free wi fi a lifeline for me but even with so many other people on the platform hooked into it the service was faster and smoother than what i often get at home considering finland s telecommunications heritage i m not surprised just impressed my experience with in station access in toronto tends more toward rolling into a station while the page steadfastly refuses to load the tight integration of stations with retail was something i saw again and again in the system helsingin yliopisto s entrance is in the middle of a modest underground mall reminiscent of vancouver s granville station with everything from a convenience store to a casino but with a particular twist to it that i don t often see beyond the ubiquitous r kioski convenience stores and near ubiquitous hesburgers i could see a grocery store from either the platform or the main entrance of most stations i visited to me it echoes how corner grocery stores prospered along streetcar lines allowing people on their way home to stop in quickly for staples rather than making food shopping a once a week car filling odyssey not that the system bends its knee to drivers at every opportunity unlike north american systems the helsinki metro doesn t feel like it was designed around the primacy of the automobile sure there are allowances for parking particularly at the terminal stations but they re nothing compared to the commuter lots you d find at the ends of the toronto subway even adjusting for population differences take vuosaari with space for two hundred and twenty two parked cars and two hundred and forty three bicycles at kulosaari not too far from the city centre i counted forty two spots on a monday afternoon and a fair numbe...
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