To understand more about how Helsinki is developing its traffic management, FIA Clubs were invited to the Finnish Transport Agency for a tour of the Traffic Management Centre (TMC). They received an exclusive demonstration of Coop – a brand new cellular system which launched in pilot on 11 May, aimed at providing real-time accurate information on road conditions and traffic. Coop is the Finnish pilot project of NordicWay, a Nordic EU-funded project. 

Coop will run a two-way flow of traffic information utilising the current cellular network infrastructure, negating the need for an expensive separate system to be developed and implemented. FIA Clubs were able to try out a simulation of the mobile software, reporting incidents and seeing how they would be transmitted to the TMC and to fellow road users.

Project Manager of Coop , Ilkka Kotilainen, said: “It’s fantastic to have been able to give this demonstration to FIA Clubs – their feedback about the services we are going to pilot has been very helpful.

“This was a world first for us to show what we are doing and the ideas we have shared will be very helpful in developing the system to make the roads here safer.”

Should the pilot programme prove to be successful, NordicWay is planned to be rolled out in other Nordic cities, outside of the Finnish borders.