Never Miss That Tram Again
Helsinki’s public transportation recently got a lot geekier. Buying tram, bus and metro tickets by sending a message from your handy is so passé. Especially after last year when HKL introduced wireless Internet access on some of the trams and buses traversing the city at no additional cost to users. You can surf as much as you want for the 90 minutes the two euros ticket is valid.
If you’re using the public transportation to get to and from work, this is excellent. It’s so convenient to browse the Web and read your email. So whoever thinks that Google’s employees have it good because they have the access on their shuttle bus between San Francisco and Mountain View should think again. Having the access in this country is definitely a commodity, rather than a privilege. And Wi-Fi on public buses and trams is just another proof.
However the latest improvement is about much more than just the access. From the beginning on June anyone can track public transportation in Helsinki on the Internet in real time. By visiting HKL’s Public Transport Map you can follow individual GPS outfitted trams and buses as they roll down the streets of Helsinki. And this is just the beginning.
The sweetest thing happens when you click the icon of a selected vehicle on the map. As a result a table listing the upcoming stops with estimated times of arrival for each of them pops up. Now, that is not just geeky, but also extremely useful. In addition you also get to see the exact location of each stop on the way and can tell the map to follow the selected vehicle automatically.
Currently only several bus and tram lines are shown on the map so Helsinki looks deserted like Chernobyl. However, according to HKL this will change in the near future as they plan to add all trams to this service by 2008, while by 2010 you’ll be able to follow the complete public transportation network in Helsinki. Quite nifty.
I can easily imagine that from that point on every resident of Helsinki will know exactly how many seconds it takes them to get from their computer screen to getting to that stop.
This just makes me wonder how much more will they be able to encourage the population to use the public transportation with a service like this. Already now for 64% of all motorized transportation within Helsinki people use public transportation.
I encourage you to go and check out the Public Transport Map even if you do not live in Helsinki or Finland. Write to you mayor and ask them to beef up your buses, trams, boats or what you have it with a similar system. Meanwhile I’ll go and get some paper towels to wipe the drool off my keyboard.
Mladen
This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 10:24 pm and is filed under Culture, Environment, Finland. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 24th, 2007 at 11:59 am
I was looking for something about Jyväskylä (where my sister, whom we visited, just moved) and somehow stumbled on your blog. I read an article and then another one and now I’m reading the twentieth one.
Probably you know what you are but I say nevertheless: a talented and insightful writer with an admirably positive attitude. The guys at the university are fools if they don’t find a way to use your talent and knowledge in order to attract new international students and, at the same time, give them a realistic view of what’s the life like up there.
Unless you haven’t changed your mind from what you wrote in the earlier entries whom I’ve read so far …
Jyväskylä gives an impression of being a really nice town - after a visit of two days. The natural surroundings are splendid and the city is not “too small”, I guess. Not in the summer time, at least. I live in Turku and Jyväskylä is certainly one of the few towns in Finland where I could think of living.
I’ve driven once through Slovenia long time ago, in the 80s, but even then I thought that was different, the Austria … or rather perhaps the northern Italy of the Balcans. That was supposed to be a compliment ;-) Sorry if it wasn’t.
Anyways, the drinking issue seems to pop up in your blog, you’re not different from many other foreigners. I think you’re right in pointing out that getting drunk is socially acceptable in Finland, more so than in South-European countries and even in many northern ones (unless you’re supposed to get serious, of course). The reason behind it might well have something to do with too much regulation and the resulting “fuck-you attitude”.
The expression of “please”, by the way, exists in the Finnish language, as you probably know by now. The polite way of asking is naturally different from the rude way - in Finnish as in any other language, I guess. There just isn’t one single word denoting it.
Your blog deserves more publicity than it now seems to be getting.
July 26th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Tomi,
First of all, thank you for your flattering comment. And then, naturally, I am pleased to hear that after accidentally stumbling upon my blog you ended up reading tens of posts and even enjoyed them.
Frankly speaking, I would think that at the University of Jyväskylä only a handful of people know about this blog. And even those who do read it, read it because of the personal relationships which have been established between us over the last two years. As far as I know no one has ever used any of my writing for the promotion of University’s quite accomplished international programs, and neither do they link to it.
I have to say that I agree with what you say about the potential for University’s promotion and how blog is worthy of more publicity than it seems to be getting. However, I think that the blame that neither is the case lies exclusively on me. So far I have done practically nothing for its promotion (with an exception of informing friends and acquaintances here and there about blog’s existence). Which really means that people learn about The Slate by accidentally stumbling upon it (like you did) or by word of links.
Being read and gaining public acclaim is probably a wish of any writer (including bloggers). That said I must, however, also add that acclaim is much sweeter if it gradually accumulates for reasons other than cunning marketing schemes or as a result of search engine duping. Receiving a positive comment from an accidental visitor (as you yourself seem to be in this case) is worthy much more than mere statistics.
Now on to other topics.
Speaking of changing my mind. I don’t think I have changed my mind about anything I have written so far. Maybe one thing and even that did not change entirely. Even though the quality of cafeteria food at the University of Jyväskylä is quite high, I don’t think my taste buds would have had fun after more than several months.
Other than that I agree that Jyväskylä is a really pleasant town. I especially enjoyed the closeness of nature and the international flavor it receives from the hundreds of students coming from abroad. However, summer time in Finland is something special, I have to admit. From May to August the smallest towns are often places of multitude of events and it is great fun to be in the center of action.
Great to hear that you’ve driven through Slovenia and that being a Balkan country (then still part of now defunct Yugoslavia) you thought it differed from Austria and Italy, or other Western countries. Many things have changed since the 80s. I am afraid to say that even though most of the people enjoy these changes, Slovenia has also appropriated hair raising and irritating customs many of which originate in Western capitalist societies. Becoming a consumerism centered society is just one example.
On to alcohol consumption. True, I write about it often even though by doing so I still clearly take a role of a fascinated foreigner. I can’t help it, but that’s what often echoes in my mind and even gets amplified whenever I witness the undeniable connection and role of alcohol in Finnish and other Nordic societies by either seeing a stunt on the street, read about it in the papers or experience it among my Nordic friends. Thus I cannot promise I will abandon the topic anytime soon or altogether. It’ll take me a while to wrap my mind around it and get over it.
As for saying please in Finnish, you assumed correctly, I have accustomed myself to using the polite way of expressing requests, which equals the post hoc use of please in English and many other languages’ syntax, no matter what the word is. Once the syntax and structure of Finnish language sunk into my everyday use, nonexistence of a single word for please stopped me from scratching my head whenever I wished to request something.
Thank you again for your kind words, and I hope you’ll come back from time to time.
Mladen
December 14th, 2008 at 11:11 am
[…] you’re reading this blog regularly, then you might remember reading here about a year and a half ago about how Helsinki Public Transportation is outfitting their buses, […]