N°349Content

The discussion of roads, railways and waterways as an integrated transport system within one state organisation has been going on for years on a political level. At the same time demands for the separation of productional tasks from the tasks of the infrastructure authorities, have led to the formation of state owned production companies and infrastructure administrations, which focus on procurement and putting works out to tender. After the separation of the production units, it became politically easier to start a concrete discussion on a merger of the separate infrastructure administrations. The foreseeable advantages of integrated transport system planning as well as the many evident synergies from merging the relatively small separate road-, rail- and maritime client administrations led to the establishment of the Finnish Transport Agency in the beginning of 2010. Finavia (former Finnish Aviation Administration) was not part of the merger because of its being a 100% revenue-funded state owned company.