Helsinki Summer School in Transportation 2010
Earlier this month I visited Helsinki, Finland for the annual Helsinki Summer School in Transportation. This summer workshop is held at Aalto University School of Science and Technology. It is organized by Dr. Antti Talvitie, a professor at Aalto University, and Dr. Shinya Kikuchi, a professor at Virginia Tech’s National Capital Region campus. This year’s theme was “Reason Building for Decision-Making in the Transport Sector”, and from June 7 to June 11 we heard a variety of lectures and had discussions on topics of uncertainty, risk analysis, transport policy, and transport administration.
During my stay, I slept at a hostel in downtown Helsinki and took a regional bus to the Otaniemi campus in the city of Espoo. The other workshop participants included two other Americans and students and professionals from the United Kingdom, Spain, Finland, Morocco, Japan, Denmark, Belgium, and Italy. One of highlights of the week was a visit to the Port of Helsinki, located at Vuosaari Harbor. The picture below is from the visit.
During my stay I had time to explore the city of Helsinki, Nuuksio National Park about one hour outside the city, and take a ferry to Tallinn, Estonia for a day. Perhaps what was very special about the trip was experiencing Helsinki’s multimodal transit system. In one week I was able to travel by regional bus, city bus, tram, metro transit, regional train, intercity ferry, and regional ferry; all but the intercity ferry required only one integrated transit card.
