Questions and answers

The light rail will run from Itäkeskus in Helsinki to Keilaniemi in Espoo.

The service will run from Itäkeskus via Viikki, Oulunkylä, Maunula and Haaga to Pitäjämäki, from where it will continue via Perkkaa, Leppävaara, Laajalahti and Otaniemi to Keilaniemi.

The length of the rail line is about 25km, of which 16 are in Helsinki and 9 in Espoo. There are 34 pairs of stops.

Light rail line 15 will run within zone B. Because there are no one zone tickets in the HSL area, you will need an AB or BC ticket.

The journey from Itäkeskus to Keilaniemi takes about an hour.
What are the journey times for the key sections of the route?

Approximate journey times between stops:

• Keilaniemi – Otaniemi ~ 4 min
• Otaniemi – Leppävaara ~ 13 min
• Leppävaara – Huopalahti station ~ 14 min
• Huopalahti station – Oulunkylä station ~ 15 min
• Oulunkylä station– Viikki Science Park ~ 6 min
• Viikki Science Park – Itäkeskus ~ 9 min

The key interchanges are:

• Keilaniemi – interchange for the metro
• Aalto University – interchange for the metro and buses
• Leppävaara – interchange for trains and buses
• Huopalahti station – interchange for trains and buses
• Hämeenlinnanväylä – interchange for buses
• Maunula – interchange for buses
• Oulunkylä station – interchange for trains and buses
• Viikki Science Park – interchange for buses
• Itäkeskus – interchange for the metro and buses

There will be changes to bus routes in Tapiola and Leppävaara from August 2023. The changes are partly due to the light rail line.

The terminus of bus route 550 will move from Westend to Keilaniemi on 14 August. A new bus route 523 will be introduced. The bus will run from Westendinasema via Tapiola to Leppävaara. The bus will run via Ring I, providing frequent service between Tapiola and Leppävaara.

Bus 550 will continue to run between Itäkeskus and Keilaniemi until it is possible to increase the service frequency of light rail line 15. Eventually, light rail line 15 will replace bus 550, i.e. the bus route will be withdrawn.  

The timetables will be available in the Journey Planner in good time before the service starts operating, but we do know exact dates at present.

Stops are located in current or future hubs of housing, jobs and services.

The average distance between stops is 800 meters. The aim was that the stops would serve as large a number of passengers as possible while also enabling sufficiently short journey times.

You can recognize the light rail stops by their information poles. The poles have large passenger information boards attached to them.

All stops have shelters. At the busiest stops, the stop shelters are longer and stop platforms are slightly wider than at other stops. The busiest stops also have larger information boards than other stops.

The light rail line stops are not substantially longer than the stops for central city trams. At the central city tram stops, there may be several trams at a time.

At light rail line stops, there will only be one tram at a time, but the vehicles consist of modules and they may be lengthened so that they will use the full length of the stops.

Bicycle parking facilities will be made available at all stops. The stops are also easily accessible by bike.

The route was designed to serve as many passengers as possible while at the same time keeping journey times as short as possible.

Both Otaniemi and Keilaniemi are developing rapidly. A service running between Otaniemi and Keilaniemi can serve more passengers than other route alternatives without increased journey times.

Moreover, there is a wealth of schools and jobs in both areas. For this reason the terminus is in Keilaniemi instead of Westend.

Passengers make a lot of regular, predictable journeys to Otaniemi and Keilaniemi, whereas journeys to Tapiola are more irregular.

In the preliminary master plan in 2009, the route went via Laajalahti to Tapiola but the route was later realigned.

Passengers change a lot from bus route 550 to trains and the metro as well as to other buses. Consequently, special attention was paid to the ease and effectiveness of interchanges when planning the light rail line stops.

Bus stops and light rail line stops are close to each other to make interchanging as easy as possible.

During the construction, it was decided to move the terminus away from the Itäkeskus terminal because the terminal needs to be renovated. The terminus will move to the bus terminal after the renovation.

The exact schedule is not yet known, but the works will take several years.

When HSL started planning passenger information for the light rail line, the starting point was that the new public transport mode is closer to the metro and trains than the traditional central city trams.

The busiest stops (Itäkeskus, Viikki, Oulunkylä, Maunula, Hämeenlinnanväylä, Huopalahti, Leppävaara, Aalto University and Otaniemi) will be equipped with larger information displays than the other stops. At stops, announcements tell when the next tram is due and service disruption alerts are read out loud.

The stops have buttons to push to hear how many minutes until the next light rail vehicle will arrive. This is especially helpful for visually impaired passengers.

The carriages will have terminus announcements. The carriages also have door lights, and arrows on the onboard displays indicate the door opening direction.

If you use the light rail line regularly, you might want to add it to My routes section at HSL.fi (under My options) or on the HSL app. This will allow you to get email notifications of any major delays, exceptional operating hours and other service changes.

You can also find disruption alerts for the light rail line in the Journey Planner and on our Disruptions and service changes page.

Although the track has been carefully designed and the carriages are reliable and durable, services may sometimes be disrupted due to an accident or a technical fault to a carriage.

Preparations for disruptions have been made since the launch of the rail project. A wide range of expertise, such as the experience of Helsinki’s current tram traffic control center, has been used for incident management.

Simulation of disruptions has helped light rail line planners to understand how vulnerable the services are to various disruptions. In the simulation, the movement of the carriages was modelled as accurately as possible. Studies have been conducted, for example, on the effects of slippery tracks (simulating the autumn leaf-fall conditions).

The adequacy of power supply has been simulated to provide certainty about the adequacy of power supply even if one of the substations stopped working.

In addition to the termini and the depot, there are seven reversing points along the track where the direction of the vehicles can be reversed in case of a broken vehicle or technical faults.

The reversing points are located at even distances in order to make the removal of faulty carriages as smooth as possible. The reversing points are located close to public transport interchanges so that passengers can easily change to the metro or to commuter trains in case of a long-term service disruption.

The most important reversing points are close to Leppävaara, Huopalahti and Oulunkylä stations and in Otaniemi.

The final operating models for disruptions will be developed when the light rail line opens. A new operator in the incident management team is the Western Uusimaa Rescue Department in Espoo, which has no previous experience with light rail vehicle fleet.

The effectiveness of cooperation between all parties will be ensured through joint incident management exercises.

Pedestrians, cyclists and motorists should always use care and caution when walking, riding or driving near tracks. You should definitely avoid last-minute crossings because the braking distance of the heavy carriages is long.

How does a light rail crossing point differ from a regular pedestrian crossing?
Crossing points are places where you can cross the tracks and where pedestrians are always obliged to give way to the trams. At traffic light controlled crossing points, always obey traffic lights.

There are no pedestrian crossing signs or road markings at the crossing points. The crossing points can be identified by the brown toned paving. There is a white tram icon in the middle of the tracks. The concrete surface is made slip-resistant by brooming. There is a normal pedestrian crossing on both sides of the tracks.

New housing and employment developments are planned along the light rail line both in Helsinki and Espoo. In the long-term, the aim is to build housing for tens of thousands of residents.

Building housing and services along the light rail line is profitable and in line with sustainable development, as the surrounding areas already have streets, utility infrastructure and services.

As more homes are constructed along the rail line, the number of services will also increase. The goal is to make areas around the stops attractive for housing, jobs and services.

There are several valuable natural sites along the rail line, ranging from wetland sites to nature reserves. The sites have been taken into account in the planning and construction of the tracks.

The Laajalahti and Vanhankaupunginlahti Natura areas with large bird habitats are close to the rail line. The impacts of the construction project on Natura areas were studied in separate impact assessments. The bird habitats were taken into account by limiting high noise construction to outside the nesting season.

There are flying squirrels in both Espoo and Helsinki. In the planning of the light rail line, the squirrels were taken into account by safeguarding and developing the connectivity of flying squirrel habitats.

There are eight water areas around the rail line, most of which are trout streams. Spawning beds have been built to protect trout populations and to improve their living conditions. In some areas, passageways have been built for animals.

Two new bridges were constructed over River Vantaa, one for the light rail line and one for pedestrians. An endangered species of mussels, thick-shelled river mussel, is living in the river and the mussels were moved upstream to protect the species.

During the construction, the diversity of the street environment was improved. Grass tracks increase green space. Green surfaces bind dust and improve the city’s microclimate.

Trams are an environmentally friendly means of transport. Tram services do not produce any local emissions. The light rail runs on renewable energy, i.e. on wind and water power.

The braking energy of the carriages is recovered and used for air conditioning and for heating in winter.

A high-speed rail connection that provides access to a range of services reduces the need for car use, thus reducing CO2 emissions and air pollution caused by car travel.

Developing and increasing rail transport is one of the most effective ways to reduce transport emissions.

The light rail line contributes to achieving the carbon neutrality goal of the city of Helsinki, which means reducing green house gas emissions by 80 percent from 1990 to 2035. In order to achieve the goal, greenhouse gas emissions from traffic must be decreased by 69 percent by 2035 compared to 2005 levels.

The City of Espoo aims to be carbon neutral by 2030.

The light rail also saves urban space. One light rail carriage is 34.5 meters long and can carry about 200 passengers. If these 200 passengers travelled in normal size cars, with one passenger per car, the cars would create a queue of about 900 meters.

The light rail vehicles consume about 57 kWh per 100 kilometers. The energy consumption is slightly higher than that of the central city trams because the light rail carriages are longer and have one drive bogie less than the central city trams.

The average consumption of an electric car is about 20 kWh per 100 kilometers and the average consumption of a gas car is 50–70 kWh per 100 kilometers.

However, there is often only one passenger in a car while the light rail vehicles can carry up to 200 passengers. When calculated in this way, the per passenger energy consumption of the light rail vehicle is significantly lower that that of a car.