Länsimetro to handover new stations to HKL in early Sept

The Länsimetro Oy, the company implementing the project of West Metro services between Helsinki and Espoo, decided that management of the stations, shafts, track and building services systems of the Ruoholahti to Matinkylä will be handed over to Helsinki City Transport (HKL) at the beginning of September.

Following the handover, the HKL will begin preparatory work for the initiation of traffic. HKL will decide on when traffic will begin running, said a recent press release issued after a board meeting of the company.

The Board approved an agreement with the City of Espoo’s Technical and Environmental Services on the management and maintenance of external areas for phase one of the metro in the Espoo city area.

Progress with the Matinkylä-Kivenlahti line, belonging to the second phase of the project, was presented to the Board. The excavations on this section are progressing as planned.

Hannu Mikola (main design, architecture) presented the architectural design principles, the location of stations and shafts in the urban environment, and visual representations of stations related to phase two of the West Metro, Matinkylä-Kivenlahti.

Länsimetro Oy said in early August that the work is going smoothly and the metro services are expected to be launched in September.

The implementation of the West Metro project from Ruoholahti in Helsinki to Matinkylä in Espoo was originally scheduled to open in 2014, but the project has been delayed repeatedly with the last deadline for completion set for early 2017 after the August 2016 deadline was also delayed.

Earlier, in October 2016, the authorities said the opening of the West Metro Services will be delayed further due to hardware faults.

Then again in June 2016, the West Metro authorities said its test run for passengers would begin no later than January 2017.

However, the initiation of the test traffic has required more time than foreseen, as tests related to fire situations conducted at Aalto University have found faults in the operations of equipment, the sources said.

The authorities even failed to estimate the possible timetable for beginning of the operations.

In September 2016, the Helsinki City Corporation decided to investigate into the reasons behind the delay in launching the West Metro services.

The city authorities appointed the accounting and advisory services firm BDO Ltd to probe into the matter.

BDO Ltd has been asked to submit its report by the end of October on the delay of launching West Metro services and the loss incurred by the city.