The importance of air traffic has been getting bigger for the entire 20th century. According to forecasts, the growth will continue also in the 21 century. Global passenger traffic has been estimated to grow 5 % annually in the next few years. The growth will decrease later, being about 4 % annually between years 1997 and 2010. Difference between areas is big: in North America the growth is estimated to be less than 3 % annually, when in other areas it will be about 5 % or more. Competition in air traffic has increased lately. Airlines have founded global alliances in order to increase their chances in the competition. As far as routes are concerned, several airlines have been using hub and spoke strategy for the last few years. Passengers travel via one or more hub airports, which means flights are centralized in those airports. Biggest benefit of a hub and spoke strategy is for an alliance, since it enables alliance airlines to offer maximal amount of city pairs for customers. In freight transport air cargo has improved it's volume in the last few years.
Abnormal road transport is unloaded vehicle or vehicle loaded by undivided object, where one or several generally allowed dimension or weight limits are exceeded. Although abnormal road transports represent less than one percent of all road transports, it is a very significant segment of road transports. The obtained abnormal road transport permits has increased during the last years and the amount is at the present about 12 000 permits per year. Finnish Road Administration has centralized permit operations for abnormal road transports to Hame Region and permit operations are under a development process. In a predominant dynamic business environment the time span for abnormal road transport planning has shortened according to general logistic development trends. Transport operations are often performed during same day as order is received. Therefore permit process is required to be fast, effective and flexible. Nowadays permit process operates according to the needs of business life and handling times are remarkably faster than service agreement given by Road Administration. In an international comparison handling times and availability of permits for abnormal road transports are at high level in Finland. Abnormal road transports are extremely important for metal and engineering industries and building construction industry. Also technical trade and forest machinery business areas are significant clients of abnormal road transports. In examination of abnormal road transports the transports can be divided into two segments: project transports of extremely large products and other abnormal transports. Although the amount of large project transports is relatively small, they are a challenging and planning intensive segment of abnormal transports. Time span of planning process is typically long and on the other hand transport operators are in general professionally skilled. Also the role of Road Administration is more essential, because transport routes are usually planned in co-operation and Road Administration is involved in several stages of planning process. Other abnormal road transports are more dynamic from planning process point of view and are related mainly to transports of various construction equipments. Time span in these transports are usually only few hours and therefore fast permit operations are essential for this transport segment. Development of route permits has decreased the need of single permit granting. Transport environment and costs both in procurement and finished products are one significant factor in decision making related to the location of production units. In prevailing global production and market structures operational preconditions have a great importance. Therefore abnormal road transports are in an important role for industrial operations in Finland in the future business environment. This report may be found at http://alk.tiehallinto.fi/julkaisut/pdf/3201040-v-erikoiskuljetustoiminnan_asiakastarpeet.pdf
The need for defining a basic service level of a transport system is necessitated by the structural changes at the regional level and in the society in general (e.g. focused migration to a few cities, changes in industry and commerce). These trends result in a weakening of the service level of transport infrastructure, in particular in areas with a decreasing population. Since in regions with a decreasing population transport infrastructure cannot be maintained on the basis of demand criteria, the need for a definition of a basic service level has arisen. The basic level should indicate what service level is at least to be attained regardless of traffic demand levels. Definition of basic service level is closely connected to regional equity, and to the relation between infrastructure qualities and regional development. At the most generic level the basic service level of infrastructure means a level of accessibility, which enables the achievement of a certain welfare level, while avoiding both unreasonable cost burdens for the infrastructure owners and unreasonable amounts of external costs. Eventually the specification of the basic service level is a political choice. As preparation for this choice it needs - among others - to be clarified what kind of needs are involved in the specification of basic service level and what is the users' and tax payers' willingness to pay for a certain service level, while taking account of interaction effects with other public service levels. Evaluations should also take account of the quality of transport system, including substituting and complementing functions of sub-systems, as well as the interaction with adjacent sectors and aspects, such as cost and quality of living and availability of local services. Therefore the basic service level can differ across regions and sub-systems. In addition the basic service level may be influenced by restricting traffic volumes. In the present transport system the most serious deficiencies are located in the lower road network and in private roads in rural regions with decreasing population. The financing of the maintenance of these roads has decreased substantially and hence the maintenance has become patchy while local capabilities for maintenance work vanish. To solve these problems a new financing approach and organisation of maintenance is called for. For the rail network the aged superstructure and lack of capacity are key problems. This report is available at http://www.mintc.fi
This study deals with a method of traffic infrastructure management, in which it is possible to take into consideration the demands set by the road users. In this study these demands of the road network users have been compared to the traffic conditions in different parts of the road network by applying and further developing this method. The purpose of this study was to define insufficient road network conditions from the standpoint of the road user, in the other words the undersupply situations on the road network. Additionally the purpose was to specify the improvement requirements of the road network especially from the aspect of road maintenance.The most important factors of freight transport are cost efficiency and punctuality. The road network demands of freight transport were determined by defining the parts of the road network where there is a lot of transportation requiring cost efficiency or punctuality. Also the parts of the road network where the annual volume of freight is over 2,5 million tons were determined. The amount of freight on the low volume road network was estimated on the basis of the raw wood quantity delivered by the forestry companies. The parts of the road network were classified according to their amount of passengers. On the basis of this classification the road network parts of high demand level were determined. A time variation of traffic was estimated by using the information produced by the traffic monitoring system maintained by the Finnish National Road Administration. On the basis of the analysis most of the passenger traffic occurs during daytime in the summer months. The greatest amount of freight traffic occurs at night-time during the wintertime. According to this, night-time maintenance should be more efficiently taken into consideration in the planning of the winter road maintenance. Maintenance level, traffic capacity and traffic safety were considered in the process of specifying the traffic conditions of the road network.
The report discusses how the average length, width, height, weight, number of seats and characteristics of engines, have developed during the last decade. (TRRL)
The focus of industrial production in Finland is experiencing a transition from basic industry into high technology production. A new dimension in transport needs, transport requiring special punctuality and speed, is developing simultaneously. This trend challenges the management of transport infrastructure, because international competitiveness is affected considerably by the fluency and efficiency of high technology transport chains. This research has identified the production and transport quantities, characteristics and locations of high technology industries. Focal development needs of the infrastructure have been discerned according to these factors. The high technology branch is especially significant in Uusimaa and Varsinais-Suomi. Other important regions are Pirkanmaa, Ostrobothnia, North Ostrobothnia and Central Finland. Transport of high technology products has concentrated on the main roads of Southern and Western Finland. Helsinki airport is the main hub for international air cargo. Most important sea connections are operated from the ports of Helsinki, Turku and Naantali. Transport of high technology products is profiled by small shipments and high frequency. Clearly, the most important characteristic of transport services is reliability i.e. delivery performance. At present, bottlenecks of transport chains are connected to operations and services, not directly to transport infrastructure. Problems in the services are found with the availability of air cargo services and the heterogeneousness of customs clearance. Other problems have arisen with information transfer management. Future challenge of management of transport infrastructure will be to guarantee fluency and punctuality of transports on the main roads of Southern Finland, ring roads of the largest growth centres and airport and port connections. Port connections in the Helsinki Region are a special challenge. Additional capacity in airfreight services could be acquired by using wide-bodied aircraft more extensively. Information flow has an important role in the management of modern supply chains. Because networking can be costly for the companies, they desire help from the public administration especially in the provision of main connections and standards. This report is available at http://www.mintc.fi
