KEYNOTE - Creating gravity by Peter Vesterbacka

It takes two hours by ferry to go to Helsinki. We said, “why not build a tunnel!”. Then we started building this tunnel from Helsinki to Tallinn. We’re going to reduce the travel time to 20 minutes. We’re investing 50 billion euros into infrastructure making Helsinki and Tallinn into a metropolitan area so adding a little bit more gravity to our part of the world. We’re building 4 station areas along the tunnel each station having 50,000 people to live, work and study. We aim to have affordable housing and make the stations food and energy self-sufficient. If we can do this in the middle of the sea, we can build these cities in India, China and Africa. Completion- The first trains will be running the 24th of December 2024. We’re already selling tickets 50 euros one way 100 euros return. Why invest in this? We’re looking at the tunnel paying for itself in 17 years through passenger and cargo traffic. The internal rate of return is roughly 10% which is pretty good for an infrastructure project like this.