On the first day of the site visit, the participants were welcomed by Rauli Lindeman and Jaakko Ylinampa who gave a presentation on land use and transport planning in Oulu. Jaakko then described the transport characteristics and major schemes in Oulu before the group embarked on a tour of the cycle and pedestrian network of the city. On day two, Rauli Lindeman described the public transport system in Oulu, Luca Persia presented the data submitted so far and the group discussed.

The Oulu Context

The city of Oulu has an interesting history, having been ruled by Sweden and then Russia before Finland achieved independence 1917. Traditionally the city has been a major port, exporting reindeer fur and the city’s most famous product, tar. Now, hi-tech industries are more important in a more service sector based economy, with Nokia employing 5000 people in the city which also produces 5000 jobs for sub-contractors.

The city will celebrate its 400th anniversary in 2005 and during the year, there will be no development allowed in the city centre. Oulu has always had a grid pattern to the road network and the city, although dating back 400 years, has many modern buildings as there were several fires which destroyed the older wooden buildings. As a result of these fires, the city was re-designed slightly to have wider roads and parks in the centre, to restrict the spread of fires.

More recently, the city has benefited from the construction of a hydro electric power plant on the Oulu river which has calmed the river and also made money for the city. The growth in population has been rapid since the 1930s when there were 28,000 inhabitants to 100,000 in 1990 and now to about 125,000. Oulu is now Finland’s 6th largest city and the population increase, which includes surrounding municipalities, is expected to continue.

Land Use and Transport Planning in Oulu

A master plan has been produced covering Oulu and the surrounding municipalities, a principal project within this is the construction of another river crossing. In Finland, many people aspire to build their own detached home on a plot of land outside the city which contributes to decentralisation of the city. Another problem faced by transport planners is the increasing popularity of out of town shopping centres which has had a negative effect on the attractiveness of the city centre. Added to this, there is a lack of parking spaces in the central area; Finnish law dictates that there should be 1 parking space per 100m2 of development but this has not been achieved throughout the centre.

Oulu municipality plans to remedy these problems by increasing the number of parking spaces in the centre with the development of underground parking. The underground parking plan should help to remove traffic searching for parking spaces and should help to re-vitalise the central area, generating mode demand for all modes of transport. Some covered walkways will be created to link residential areas to shopping facilities in the centre.

Bus services will also be adjusted so that all services run along one main street in both directions with some removal of on street parking. Real time information will be installed on all local buses by 2005 and bus priority schemes will also be implemented. Public transport in Oulu is operated by private companies, the biggest is Koskilinjat. New colour coded city centre bus services are planned to make bus routes cheap and easy to use for short distance urban journeys. Currently, bus services are mostly used by children and elderly people and account for only 6% of journeys made in the city.

Car ownership in the city is relatively high and is expected to increase due to the lowering of tax levels for car ownership. During the winter, Oulu experiences very low temperatures and heavy snow but the local authority keeps traffic moving through well established gritting and ploughing procedures. Most Oulu residents heat their cars overnight during the winter.

Despite the freezing temperatures, Oulu has many cyclists of all ages, many of whom cycle throughout the year. In the summer , 40% of trips to the city centre are made by bicycle or by walking, aided by well defined pedestrian and cycle routes, of which there has been an increase of 21% since 1991. More than half of the cycleways in the city are segregated from other traffic.

Public Transport in Oulu

Koskilinjat is the main public transport operator in Oulu whose 95 buses carry 7.8 million passengers per year. Demand for public transport is 2-3 times greater in the winter, when cold weather conditions deter people from cycling or walking, than in the summer when demand for public transport falls sharply. Nearly all the bus routes in Oulu cross the city centre giving good connections between suburbs on opposite sides of the city. The perception of public transport in Oulu is not good compared with the private car and out of town developments aimed at car users have been constructed without taking public transport into account.