Rail Link from St. Petersburg Will Increase Helsinki-Vantaa Airport Passenger Levels

Finnish State Railways(VR) is optimistic the new fast Allegro rail link between St. Petersburg and Helsinki will also bring more passengers to Helsinki-Vantaa Airport.

Flights to foreign destinations are limited from St. Petersburg Airportt. VR hopes Russian travelers will use the new rail link to take advantage of Helsinki-Vantaa’s flight services.

“Currently the journey between the two cities takes six hours but the new Allegro service will reduce the journey time by almost half,” says VR’s Passenger Traffic Director, Antti Jaatinen.

Jaatinen adds both VR and Russian rail operators aim for a threefold increase in passenger numbers over the next decade to around 700,000 annually.

Feeding VR’s optimism is the projected completion, in 2014, of a direct rail link to Helsinki-Vantaa Airport from the capital.

The Finnish Transport Agency has also a long term vision whereby passengers from Russia travelling from Helsinki-Vantaa Airport might check-in to their flights at St. Petersburg and be conveyed directly to security control with baggage going its own way to the plane.

source: YLE

New train services between Russia and Finland

In connection with start of high-speed train service St. Petersburg - Helsinki on the December, 12, two Russian trains, Repin and Finnish Sibelius will carry out new services connecting North-western Russia with Southern Finland. So, Finnish-Russian railway services are developing.Allegro high-speed train will run St. Petersburg - Helsinki two times a day since December, 12, 2010. Amount of daily trips will be increased to four from the summer, 2011. Trains Repin and Sibelius plying between St. Petersburg and Helsinki now will stop their services. To compare: Allegro's occupancy is 350 passengers, while these ones transport 200 - 500 passengers in one trip. Amount of cars was varying depending on the amount of tickets sold.
Repin train is supposed to be redeployed to route St. Petersburg - Lappeenranta. Moreover, a possibility for new train services between southern Finnish cities and Petrozavodsk are also being discussed. Service to Lappeeranta is believed to be popular because of airport of this city, because of regular flights of Air Baltic and Ryanair discount air carriers. Most passengers of the train will be people using their services. Now they take taxi from St. Petersburg to Lappeeranta. It doesn't break Finnish laws, but Finnish border police doesn't like such practice at all.

source: http://www.russia-ic.com/