Municipalities do not accept the policy of the government's economic policy ministerial committee regarding the construction costs of the Länsirada, known as Turku's one-hour train.
The committee outlined in December, that the state's financial share during the construction phase would be only 51 percent, which corresponds to the state's current ownership share in the project company. The remaining 49 percent would be divided between the project company's other partners, i.e. the municipalities.
However, the state may still respond. According to HS's information, the ministerial committee's line on cost sharing has just arrived Petteri Orpon (kok) the government's preliminary starting point for the spring negotiations with the municipalities. The government has prepared to use the 460 million euros entered in the government program for the project.
HS contacted the municipalities that are partners in the project company, for whom the policy would mean a big bill.
Among the municipalities, the project company's largest shareholders are Turku and Espoo. Other currently participating municipalities are Helsinki, Salo, Lohja, Vihti and Kirkkonummi.
This is what it's all about
The plans for the hour train have lived on along the way
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According to the project company's latest calculations, the construction of the track would cost a total of 2.8–3 billion euros.
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Nearly a billion euros have been invested in the track's plans savings for example by changing the section between Salo and Lohja to a single track.
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The track is planned to be built in stages. It would be completely completed in the early 2030s.
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The remaining costs of the line, such as Salo–Lohja, which is estimated to be the most expensive section, would be left for consideration by the next government.
Turku the city's owner steering director Jarkko Virtanen says that the committee's policy came as a surprise.
According to him, the project's previous decisions have been based on negotiations between shareholders and the shareholders' agreement. During the spring, it is planned to negotiate a new shareholder agreement, where the cost distribution of the construction phase will be decided.
“It is not possible to change the shareholders' agreement unilaterally”, Virtanen points out and refers to the committee's policy.
“Negotiations are not such that one party says how things will go”, formulates Lohja's director of urban structure Pekka Puistosalo.
The construction of the western line is already visible in the cityscape of Turku.
In public calculations have already been made, according to which the municipalities would have to pay up to hundreds of millions of euros for the track based on the committee's policy.
Virtanen, who represents Turku, emphasizes that the ministerial committee's policy only applies to the next funding phase, during which the construction planning of the entire connection would be done and the line between Espoo–Hista and Salo–Hajala would be built.
“We are negotiating with the state about the funding shares of this project phase, not in any case about the funding shares of the project as a whole.”
It is also not yet possible to properly assess the municipalities' future shares in the project company, as they depend on the shareholders' agreement to be negotiated in the spring.
The goal is to have the contract concluded by the end of May, says Virtanen. Municipalities require a political decision to commit to the agreement.
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“The cost level of public authority is not reduced by the state pushing the costs onto the municipalities.”
To what kind are the municipalities ready to commit to the share?
The municipalities point out that it is the state's rail network. Lohja Puistosalo reminds that in previous rail projects, the share of the municipalities has been negligible.
“These are questions of principle about how the national rail and road network is financed”, says also the branch director of Espoo's urban environment Olli Isotalo.
“There are municipalities of different sizes involved here. The cost level of public authority does not decrease because the state pushes the costs to the municipalities. There is a certain amount of taxpayers paying.”
Mayor of Vihti Erkki Eerola considers that the state's financial contribution should be clearly the largest.
“There are many good examples in Finland, such as the Lahti railway, where the state has been fully responsible for the financing.”
In addition, he points out that the municipalities will pay for the infrastructure built around the new stations.
Länsirata is personified by Turku Prime Minister Pe
tteri Orpo, whose government is paying the lion's share of the construction phase with the municipalities.
Municipalities are not completely opposed to participating in the costs, as long as their share is smaller, Lohjan Puistosalo says.
“If the cost sharing is at that level, it becomes catastrophic from the point of view of municipal finances.”
Turun's Virtanen reminds that the failure of the project would mean the overhaul of the coastal railway, which is also a multi-billion dollar project.
“Then there would be no question of funding from the municipalities at all, but the railway would be completely paid for by the state.”
Virtanen, Isotalo, Eerola and Puistosalo sit on the board of the project company as representatives of their municipalities.
The project the next phase, i.e. the construction planning of the entire connection and the construction of the track between Espoo–Hista and Salo–Hajala, will cost an estimated 600 million euros, says the CEO of the project company Pekka Ottavainen.
For this phase, the company is applying for support from the European Union through the CEF program (Connecting Europe Facility). The EU has reserved a total of 25.8 billion euros for various transport projects in the program for the years 2021–2027.
“We are progressing step by step so that we can make maximum use of EU subsidies,” Ottavainen says.
The design costs of the next phase of the railway project are estimated at 100 million euros. CEF support can cover up to half of them. The remaining half a billion euros will be used for the construction itself, which the EU can support with a maximum of 30 percent.
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“In Europe, support has also been received for single-track lines.”
The CEF application must be made during January, and it requires preliminary commitments for funding from municipalities and states. The municipalities believe that they will have time to make non-binding financial promises by the end of the month.
“Hopefully, the government's commitment will also be received in time,” Isotalo of Espoo adds.
Partial monorailing for cost-saving reasons would lead to not being able to apply for CEF support at all, claimed the former leading expert of the Ministry of Transport and Communications Lassi Hilska To Turku Sanomat at the end of November.
The CEO of the project company, Ottavainen, denies the claim.
“In Europe, support has also been received for single-track lines.”
State economy the National Audit Office (VTV) held in December in his statement the project company model of railway projects as problematic for the state economy.
In addition to the Western Railway, Suomi-rata and Itärata use the project company model. According to VTV, the project company model has not yet been found to result in significant cost savings for engineering work.
According to the Länsirata municipal representatives, the project companies should have been looked at separately from each other, as the Länsirata is clearly the furthest from the projects.
“None of the project companies are yet in the construction phase, so it is still difficult to say about the cost savings of their design work,” Espoo's Olli Isotalo points out.
CEO Ottavainen reminds that savings of almost a billion euros were found for the Länsirada with the project company model.
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