Oh wow, wonder why. Lets not build new roads and the problem will just go away. The HS writes:

All the main arterial roads in the Helsinki area threaten to become blocked because of excessive traffic volumes within the next ten years. Blockages threaten at least some sections of every single main highway. The maximum capacity of at least some of the main trunk roads has already been exceeded.

No shit sherlocks. I can see it daily past my office window. Quite used to the traffic noise. And whats the solution? Congestion charges. yeah right.

OK, Phil, start taking a bicycle to work. its all you Espoo yuppies to blame, especially the Westend voters who don’t want the metro to bring in the rif-raf.

After 30 or so years of bickering and nimbying it seems that the nortern wastes of Vantaa will get developed instead of just being industrial areas on the Ring III.  The metro to Espoo seemed about as an absurd idea, but it seems now that there is not only the willpower but also the money to go forth with quite expensive rail projects just as the new number 9 tram in Helsinki. Oh, did I say money? With the slumping economy it seems the developers are having flats nobody is willing to buy, so the risks of housing development projects are higher.

Maybe I should rant here for a moment. The cost of living is so high that people can only afford small studios. There is a huge demand for small studios – currently theres dozens of new students in town sleeping in the gym of the school as they’ve been unable to get flats. However some intelligents in the Helsinki city planning office passed a decision that the avarage flat sizes must be 75 square meters.. meanwhile the mayor Vapaavuori is demanding smaller flats being built… hello? Anybody at home? Its your own zoning stupid! As an example of the big developers hitting the bottom – theres  a development project on Mechelininkatu where the old Matkahuolto depot used to be in a standstill as the flats won’t sell. Studios would, but nobody can afford the bigger flats. I don’t know what the council thinks but if a family has that kind of money to shell out, they’ll buy a house in Kirkkonummi instead of three rooms in a block of flats to raise their family.

These days when I go downtown Helsinki I am amazed as the whole city seem to be dug up half the time. Theres huge development projects also in Helsinki harbour and in Espoo all being initialized at the same time. Now I don’t know if theres going to be overcapacity after the projects have been finished, but at least the building industry will employ a lot of people… and for me it’ll mean a lot more traffic jams. Even now that they are planning to remove the traffic lights from Ring III even last Friday at noon just one bulldozer excavating a lamp post caused a huge traffic jam with a lane being cut off. I’m just sceptical what they can do to the roads – even the Ring III project is a part of the E18 highway and it has the government funding earmarked I cannot fathom what they can do unless they add about four lanes. Meanwhile in Helsinki the huge excavation at the end of Mannerheimintie is gotten to a point they actually cast the concrete roof of the tunnel last week… and the Leppävaara tunnel on Ring I is appearing to be in schedule. Both places are such I rather not go anywhere close to them… the Mannerheimintie intersection is quite a zoo. Funny thing its as if roadwork follows some kind of fashion trends – first it was roundabouts and now it is tunnels… And there is no end to roadwork, I blame global warming, before we had two seasons, winter and roadwork but now its only roadwork.  I’ve also seen the plans of refurbishing my local road with roundabouts and removing the traffic lights – we have some serious accidents almost weekly so I guess that is a good thing – apparently people learning to drive isn’t an option.

What I see as a good point in the whole Marja-Vantaa project is that they are actually basing the development on public transport and making the M-train track into a loop connecting to the main northern track. So at some point in time you can actually take the train to the airport as well. I’m not an ecohippie frothing over public transport, but I do see its benefits. And I am still sore over the YTV planning to screw up my local bus routes.

Growing up in Finland I heard a lot from the politicians “its a lottery win to be born in Finland”. When I had grown up I realized “you require a lottery win to be able to live in Finland”.

Things are expensive in Finland – maybe not that expensive in comparison with the other Nordic countries with a similar taxation and geographical structure, but expensive to the average consumer as the purchase power in Finland is low. The Finnish financial magazine Taloussanomat wrote about the purchase power in Finland earlier this month. According to the article , “Finns are paying themselves sick” for goods and services. Lack of competition is given as one of the a reasons why for example groceries in Finland cost one fifth more than the EU average. Finland has been quite notorious for keeping foreign competition out, and now that there are no more barriers it seems nobody is really interested in coming over as the volumes aren’t there. So Finland remains a keskolandia.

Now being somewhere at the EU average is one thing, but starting to compare things globally doesn’t make the prices look any better. When Phil goes to buy a chicken in Finland, his cousin in the USA can buy four chickens with the same price! The Iltalehti had a comparison of prices for groceries in Helsinki, Stockholm, London and New York, and it seems in the UK and USA (and London and New York are expensive cities), you can get by with about half of what you pay in Stockholm or Helsinki. Of course one explanation is the sheer volumes that bring the prices down, but it still is peculiar while milk or potatoes cost approximately the same, in some products, like meat, the price differences can be quadrupled.

With the global food shortage being blamed on the biofuels is causing food prices to go up, it still doesn’t quite explain why in Finland you need to pay your ass off just to buy your basic stuff. Then again if Norwegians come to buy “cheap booze” from Finland, we can say theres a place where things are worse. Or are they – the purchase power in Norway is higher than in Finland . Your avarage consumer is faced with the problem of rising prices and already now the shopping habits of people are changing. Maybe next year this time I’ll be sharing a potato and brown sauce recipe.

When I was a little boy, I got to play in old trenches that were virtually in my backyard. And no, I didn’t live in Suomenlinna. Back in 1914-1917 the Russians fortified an important naval base, Helsinki, against the German threat. The fortress was never used in action, except for some skirmishes during the civil war and parts of the underground bunkers used by the army and some locations as AA-turret bases in WW2.

So, if you have a day to spend in Helsinki and you think you’ve seen it all, go see the Patterimäki between Pajamäki and Pitäjänmäki, take either the bus 14 to the terminus and or the commuter train to Pitäjänmäki station and take the bridge over the tracks towards the paint factory and continue straight up the hill, there are two AA turret bases on top along with trenches and bunkers. The Helsingin Sanomat has a number of pictures in a reportage they made of the current remains of the fortress along with maps, and theres a website, also in English, dedicated to the fortification with more old pictures Krepost Sveaborg. The fortress line winds more or less along what now is Ring I, so a little off the road into the forest there might be something interesting.

Finland is one of the largest consumers of energy in the EU and one of the worst for cutting back emissions…

Finland has fallen far behind the other Nordic Countries in cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions. Finland ranks 36th on the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI), putting it on a par with Algeria and Belarus. Sweden is at the top of the list, and Denmark is in third place.

Finland’s sauna culture is no doubt partially to blame for this…

According to a fresh Finnish study by the Ministry of Employment and the Economy, desktop computers consume an average 500 kWh of electricity a year, which is the equivalent of a refrigerator-freezer. If the computer is kept on all the time, it uses about as much energy as an electric sauna that is heated twice a week.

Saunas are as necessary as SUV’s. Finns expect Americans to get rid of their SUV’s to help save the planet, while Finland should do the same by ending electric sauna use.

What’s up with this depressing weather we’ve been having this winter?? It’s amazing, I’ve never experienced such consistent temperatures, it’s been between +3 and +5 for the past three months! Thank Jebus this isn’t my first winter here, cause I don’t think I’d have stayed for a second.

YLE made a bold statement the other day, “Global Warming Spawns 2nd Consecutive Mild Winter” although a few sentences later they said, “This may in turn be a result of global warming, says the FMI.” I’m no expert on the environment, so it’s impossible for me to say one way or the other, but if we’re still unsure whether global warming is happening or not, why take a chance? Like if there was a 50-50 chance a pack of wild wolves were gonna gobble me up, I wouldn’t waste time debating, I’d start running.

But seriously though, industrialization has been around what, 200 years? And already our planet is crapping out on us? The earth is a pussy, man. Either that or God really screwed things up. “On the 7th day, God drank heavily…”