Turku

Turku is Finland’s oldest city and was founded in 1229. Turku has a compact size, perfect for exploring the exciting mixture of old and new. With its reasonable living costs, multiple housing options, active student community, vivid cultural life and a variety of outdoor recreation possibilities, Turku ensures a good quality of life to its inhabitants and becomes a lucrative location also for skilled professionals.

Turku has always had a special role among Finnish cities. European art, science, religious and political movements have found their way to Finland through Turku since the 13th century. This history has given the city a distinctively civilized and cultural atmosphere. Turku is also multicultural, as evidenced by the myriad nationalities, languages and customs. The city is home to people of over 130 nationalities, who speak over one hundred different languages. The archipelago outside the city has always been a crossroads for new cultures, ideas, doctrines and commodities, and its tides have swept far into the inland areas of Finland.

Turku is an urban node of the Scandinavian Mediterranean TEN-T corridor and is a demonstrator city within USER-CHI.

The city of Turku has set the objective to be climate neutral by 2029. The climate plan which was released in June 20118 also foresees to cut by half the travel-related emissions taking the current state of emissions as baseline. To achieve these objectives the city aims at improving the cycling and walking conditions and to further develop a sustainable mobility culture. The public transport system will also be turned into a 100% carbon neutral service.

Turku also wants to increase the e-vehicles fleet in services bought by the municipality (taxi services for disabled people, for instance). In addition, Turku currently develops innovative solutions for sustainable mobility of people and emission free freight logistics through a Horizon 2020 funded project: CIVITAS ECCENTRIC. Turku’s e-mobility measures encompass different domains.

E-cars and parking

Downtown Turku counts 7 EV. charging stations in street parking zones where the parking is free of charge during the charging of the EVs for a maximum of 4 hours. These charging stations are operated by the national company Liikennevirta Oy under the brand name Virta, that has over 300 charging stations all over Finland and an app for the easy use and navigation to the charging stations.
Additionally, private actors such as gas stations, hypermarkets, and shopping centres, and restaurants have installed EV. charging points in their parking areas. At some of these stations (for example at IKEA) the charging is free of charge.
The city of Turku allowed to switch several street parking spaces into EV. charging stations.

Light Electric Vehicles (LEVs)

In 2019 following the trend of other European cities, light rentable E-scooters (or E-scoots) were introduced to major cities in Finland by several commercial operators. Many persons started using this new and flexible transport mode. However, a significant increase of accidents and injuries by e-scooters have been reported by the city hospitals in Helsinki, Tampere, and Turku.

CIVITAS ECCENTRIC

Finally, to achieve its carbon neutrality by 2029, Turku is investing heavily in clean transport solutions. One concrete example of this process is the CIVITAS ECCENTRIC project which will develop electric transport, shared use of cars and bicycles, and the Mobility as a Service (MaaS) model. The focus area is Kupittaa. The project will, for example, pilot different e-vehicles to be used by city employees and will support the electrification of public transports.

Currently there are no other projects than USER- CHI ongoing in the city of Turku to develop the e-charging infrastructure.

Partners involved: City of Turku; Turku Energia; TVT; VASO