Railway traffic in southern Finland has been handled earlier in system level reports and more specifically divided subject-specific reports. There is a need to specify railway traffic as a whole, as well as requirements for infrastructure investment with respect to traffic characteristics (increased traffic, demand forecasts and land usage). ESSI is a visioning exercise for future rail demands in southern Finland.
The goal of the ESSI project is to define a demand forecast for years 2025/2040 and, through the development of passenger amounts, identify the points in time when longer and/or more trains are needed for different railway lines.
Ramboll performed an analysis of customer demand, service level, traffic models, investment requirements and resilience levels of future rail services. The ESSI project was based on a simulation examination of railway traffic in Southern Finland ordered by the Finnish Traffic Bureau and Helsinki Region Traffic (HSL). The work was carried out by Ramboll Finland Oy in partnership with Proxion Plan Oy, and started in December 2015 with a completion schedule of Autumn 2016.
The ESSI vision considered impacts on the service level of passengers and traffic’s limit of disturbance, short-/long-distance and freight traffic, as well as traffic requirements for developing track infrastructure and scheduling of necessary investments.