Public transport in Helsinki consists of bus, tram, metro, train, and ferry services. The system is managed by Helsinki Region Transport (HRT).
The diverse public transport system of Helsinki region consists of trams, suburban metro railways, the subway, bus lines and two ferry lines.
Today, Helsinki (Helsingfors) is the only city in Finland to have access to trams or subway trains. There used to be two other cities in Finland with trams: Turku (Åbo) and Viipuri (Vyborg). However, Turku abandoned trams in 1972 and Viipuri (at that time already part of the USSR) abandoned them in 1957.
The Helsinki Metro, opened in 1982, was the first, and so far the only, subway-system in all of Finland. For the first 16 years of its existence, the line was topologically only one straight line, but in 1998 a fork with three stations each was added at the eastern end of the line.
In 2006 the construction of the long debated extension of the subway system west into southern parts of Espoo (Esbo) was approved in Espoo City Council, and serious debate about an eastern extension into Sipoo (Sibbo) has taken place. To cope with the rising usage the Helsinki Metro is also planned to be further automated by 2014, replacing the old traffic control system with a newer one to allow shorter train intervals, although with shorter trains.
Trains depart from the Central Railway Station and Pasila (Böle) station to destinations across Finland. Pendolinos offer higher speed (up to 220 km/h) connections to major cities, as do Intercity and Intercity2 trains at slightly slower speeds, and regional and suburban trains cover all of the capital region and smaller cities and towns as far north as Riihimäki and Lahti, and as far west as Karis (Karjaa). A tunnel has been proposed to connect Helsinki with Tallinn, though the proposal is still in the investigation phase. Ring Rail Line (Kehärata-Ringbanan), a project to connect Helsinki-Vantaa Airport with the national rail network and downtown Helsinki, has been approved and construction should be completed by 2013.
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