Passengers at the central railway station of Helsinki on 18 January 2024. A series of political strikes is expected to have wide-ranging effects on public transport services in Finland on Friday, 2 February. Helsinki Region Transport (HSL), for example, is set to cancel all tram, metro and light-rail services, as well as most bus services, due to the strikes. (Emmi Korhonen – Lehtikuva)
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A SERIES of political strikes will halt almost all public transport services in Finland on Friday, 2 February.
VR, the state-owned railway company of Finland, has communicated that it will cancel all commuter and long-distance trains, with the exception of night trains, on Friday. The strikes will also stop all metro, tram and light-rail services, as well as the majority of bus services, in the capital region.
Johannes Laitila, a communication expert at Helsinki Region Transport (HSL), on Monday stated to YLE that an estimated 10–15 per cent of bus services in the region will be available on Friday.
“You simply can’t rely on public transport on a day like this,” he summed up in an interview with the public broadcasting company. “We can only apologise because there won’t be too much public transport.”
According to HSL, the strikes will have no impact on its services on Thursday, 1 February.
HSL is constantly updating its website with the latest on the effects of the political strikes. The joint municipal authority will also inform passengers of disruptions on digital displays at bus, tram and metro stops, as well as send an e-mail to its roughly 1.3 million passengers.
People affected by the cancellations will be able to apply for financial compensation on the website of HSL. Laitila told YLE that the last time trade unions organised a strike that disrupted public transport services, the authority received about 800 applications for compensation.
“If you have a seasonal ticket covering two zones, for example, we’d be talking roughly about two euros,” he added.
In Tampere, the strikes will stop the entirety of Nysse traffic on Friday. Föli, the joint municipal authority responsible for public transport services in and around Turku, has estimated that the strikes will impact the majority of its bus routes but that services will probably be available intermittently on almost all routes on Friday.
Finnish trade unions are organising a series of strikes at the beginning of next month in protest of the labour market reforms and social security cuts laid down by the government of Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (NCP).
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
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Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi
