EP360 · Economy · first published 2025-11-14
Vantaa's expensive walk-and-tram | Petri Roininen, Jouko Jääskeläinen | Negotiator 360
The episode was recorded on 7 November 2025, ten days before Vantaa's city council approved the revised plan for its light rail line. Petri Roininen (Centre Party) and Jouko Jääskeläinen (Christian Democrats) make an investment-appraisal case against it: €750 million is the price of the rails, vehicles and a depot come on top, the project has shrunk while getting more expensive, and Vantaa's tax base narrowed to under seven percentage points in the health and social services reform. Roininen's coinage, the walk-and-tram, refers to the line ending 1.5 kilometres short of the airport. That is not how it ended: the council approved the project on 17 November 2025, and the line was later extended 1.1 kilometres to about 300 metres from the terminal. Also covered: municipal ownership steering, Vantaa Energy's billion-euro investment programme, and whether vitality comes from rails or from companies.
Vantaa’s expensive walk-and-tram | Petri Roininen, Jouko Jääskeläinen | Negotiator 360
Summary: The episode was recorded on 7 November 2025, ten days before Vantaa’s city council approved the revised plan for its light rail line. Petri Roininen (Centre Party) and Jouko Jääskeläinen (Christian Democrats) make an investment-appraisal case against it: €750 million is the price of the rails, vehicles and a depot come on top, the project has shrunk while getting more expensive, and Vantaa’s tax base narrowed in the health and social services reform. That is how it ended: the council approved the project on 17 November 2025, and the line was later extended 1.1 kilometres to about 300 metres from the terminal.
How to read this
Both guests oppose the project, and they are parties to it. Roininen is a Centre Party and Jääskeläinen a Christian Democrat office-holder in Vantaa; Roininen says he moved, in the city board at the end of October and in the name of three parties, to return the project to preparation, and lost the vote 4–11 [16:19]. This is therefore the opponents’ case, not a weighing of two positions. The article says so plainly and marks the passages where arguments for the project are discussed.
The episode was recorded before the decision. It says so itself: the recording date is Friday 7 November 2025 [08:31]. The decision came afterwards, and the section “What happened” gives the outcome, checked.
The figures are the guests’, unless stated otherwise. They are marked where a public source confirms or refines them.
Quotations are spoken language, tidied of filler. Timestamps are read from the episode’s subtitle track.
Where the walk-and-tram got its name
The name is Roininen’s, and it captures the project’s central problem as it stood in November 2025:
“The stump plan was that this airport tram doesn’t go to the airport but stops a kilometre and a half short, at Aviapolis. I came up with a name for it: the walk-and-tram — tram to Aviapolis and then walk the rest of the way to the airport.” [07:00]
It is the episode’s catchiest detail, and it is also the thing that has since changed — more on that at the end.
The survey that is the episode’s news
On the day of recording, the first survey of what Vantaa residents themselves think of the project was published. Roininen’s account of the result:
“Respondents were given four options: stop it, postpone it, build it as the stump plan, or put in more money and build the original. 76 percent thought the project should be slowed — either stopped altogether or postponed. A quarter supported going ahead.” [07:00–07:45]
He highlights one detail that matters most politically: the same majority showed up among Social Democrat and National Coalition voters — the voters of the parties backing the project [07:45]. Jääskeläinen adds his own reading of why opinion has hardened: awareness of the state of municipal finances has grown [09:18].
The survey is the episode’s single most important fact, and it is worth saying what is not known about it: the episode does not give the commissioner, the sample size or the exact wording. The article therefore reports it as the guests’ figure.
The investment-appraisal case
The strongest part of the episode is an argument that is not political but arithmetic. Roininen makes it in three parts.
First: the price tag is not the whole price.
“When people say the tram costs 750 million, that money doesn’t buy you a single tram. It buys the rails. If you then want the vehicles and a depot for them, that’s a few hundred million more. We are talking about a billion-euro project in total.” [12:25]
Second: the decision has been sliced up. This is his hardest argument, and it can be made without any position on the tram itself:
“Elected members are being pushed at great speed into deciding about these rails. But the decision about the vehicles and the €100 million depot they require is not being taken in this connection. I don’t know how an investment banker would think about an investment where you build the rails but decide about the vehicles some other time.” [13:15]
Third: the appraisal does not know the time value of money. This is the episode’s sharpest observation, and it comes only at the end:
“This calculation does not know a discount rate. A euro of revenue in 2060 is worth exactly as much in it as a euro of cost today. Inflation and required returns do not feature in this arithmetic.” [44:24]
The host’s summary of the same is shorter: he would not put his money in on these specifications, and the appraisal would not, he says, be a showpiece of an investment banker’s spreadsheet [43:39]. Jääskeläinen puts it more sharply still: “with the spreadsheet we have in hand, no company would get a penny of bank lending” [52:59].
Worth adding is what the episode does not say: appraisals of public investments in Finland are done as socio-economic cost-benefit analyses in which a discount rate is used. The guests’ criticism is aimed at the calculation they had in front of them, not at the method in general — and that distinction is not drawn in the episode.
Why Vantaa is a different case from Tampere
Jääskeläinen’s comparison is the episode’s clearest structural argument, and it draws on his own experience of both cities:
“I understand Tampere quite well. The shape of the whole city is different, and it supports this kind of tram from the east to the centre and to the west. Vantaa has no grid plan in the centre. We are rather spread out.” [03:55]
Roininen adds the transport difference, which is the more important one:
“Tampere has no commuter rail. In Vantaa the local trains run every five or ten minutes. In a sense the transport function is not the central thing here.” [04:42]
And he recalls that the earlier expert recommendation was different: in the previous decade, the recommendation for developing transport was a flexible electric bus network, not light rail [04:42].
From this follows the episode’s most interesting claim about the project’s nature. According to Roininen, the justification has changed along the way:
“When this was first pushed, the number of boardings was estimated at roughly double what it is now. The transport function has quietly disappeared, and now the tram’s defenders think of it more as an urban development project.” [05:27]
Jääskeläinen ties the fall in boardings to remote work: the state’s own remote-work guidance implies about 12 days of on-site work a month, and the forecast was made in a world where Teams was not yet a tool [11:37].
The argument is good, but it also cuts both ways, and the episode does not notice: if the project is an urban development project, it should be judged by land use and housing production rather than by passenger numbers. The guests later move onto exactly that measure — and lose the question to themselves (see below).
Municipal finance: why the same project is a different project than in 2019
This is the best-grounded part of the episode, and it concerns Vantaa only as an example.
The tax base narrowed. By Jääskeläinen’s account the health and social services reform moved about 12 percentage points of taxation from municipalities to the wellbeing services counties, leaving Vantaa with under seven [11:37]. The consequence is asymmetric: “when it was 19 percent, one percentage point brought in millions more. At under seven, it doesn’t move the same way” [36:32]. Host and guests agree on this, and it is a good argument about municipalities’ investment capacity generally, not just about the tram.
Employment services moved from the state to the municipalities just as unemployment was rising — in Roininen’s words “in this cycle, a really hard thing for us” [12:25].
The difference in scale is the episode’s most striking rhetorical passage. Roininen sets the city’s savings debate beside the investment:
“In the financial plan we are discussing whether we should close the libraries on Sundays, because that would save €20,000 a year. And then we have this billion-euro pot, which takes the city’s debt to two billion.” [14:03]
In the summer of 2025 an adjustment programme of about €100 million a year was drawn up for Vantaa, he says [37:20]. These are his figures; the article has not verified them separately.
Municipal ownership steering — the episode’s underrated section
The broadest generalisation in the conversation has nothing to do with the tram. According to Roininen, municipalities take on debt in two places: in the parent municipality and in its subsidiaries, and the municipal group is not grasped as a whole [23:19].
His example is Vantaa Energy:
“A person might think Vantaa Energy is a company that looks after the energy supply of the people and businesses in Vantaa. But its strategy says roughly that the company is being made into the Nordics’ leading producer of circular economy energy solutions. A billion-euro investment programme.” [24:54]
He says he proposed that same week a structure for bringing more competence to the ownership steering of municipally owned companies [25:40], and grounds the concern in Fortum: if a strongly capitalised Fortum took a beating in the international energy game, the question of a municipal company’s risk-bearing capacity is a fair one [27:16].
Jääskeläinen brings to the same ownership discussion a rare concession, worth preserving because it is his own analysis of his own error:
“Back then 40 percent of the energy company was sold to Helsinki. We were very pleased at the time. Afterwards I have thought that I was pleased in the wrong place. Why did we sell? Why didn’t we keep it all ourselves?” [25:40]
Attached to this is the episode’s only theoretical digression: the host cites Milton Friedman’s 1970 column and the associated four-box matrix of whose money is spent on whose purposes, concluding that spending other people’s money on other people’s things is the box where responsibility is weakest [30:19].
The vitality question that is left open
The best single question in the episode belongs to neither guest but to an entrepreneur, whose question Roininen relays:
“You’re about to take this tram decision at 750 million — have you considered putting 100 million into a Vantaa growth fund and investing it in Vantaa growth companies? Which would create more vitality?” [45:58]
Roininen’s own intuition leans towards the growth fund [46:46]. The comparison is incomplete, though, and the article has to say so: the alternative offered against the tram investment is a seventh of the sum, and the episode does not ask what €750 million as a growth fund would buy — nor who would bear the risk in municipally owned venture investing.
On the built alternative the guests agree: Vantaa’s asset is space and nature, and the city would do better to build “second Ylästös and second Kartanonkoskis” — attractive low-rise neighbourhoods around good sports and outdoor facilities [41:16]. Roininen cites a housing fair survey in which over 70 percent said they would like to live in a low-rise environment, concluding that “about a million Finns live contrary to their own ideal” [42:03]. That is his figure and should be read as indicative.
At the same time they concede that Vantaa’s dynamo is the airport–Aviapolis area, one of Finland’s largest concentrations of jobs [48:18] — which is precisely where the tram is being routed. The episode does not resolve this tension.
The host’s rail fetish and where it leads
The host spends the episode making himself the counterparty: he says he prefers metro and tram over car and bus, and calls it a psychological bias himself [18:38]. Out of it come the episode’s two most constructive proposals.
A metro ring. If the Vantaa tram were not built, the eastern Helsinki metro could be extended so that a loop runs around the capital region’s commuting area [19:25]. He grounds it in the journey chain, which is clumsy under the current plan: from Mellunmäki to the airport you take the metro, change to the tram, and at Aviapolis change to the train you just overtook [20:13].
Robotaxis. Both end up concluding that automated driving and electric cars may lower road costs enough that rail is no longer self-evidently competitive — and that a flexible solution needs no dedicated corridor, so the opportunity value of the land the tram occupies goes unrealised [49:55–52:13]. This is a forecast, not a calculation, and the article marks it as one.
What happened
The episode was published on 14 November 2025. The decision came three days later, and it went differently from what the guests hoped.
Checked. Vantaa city council approved the revised project plan on 17 November 2025. The construction cost estimate is €750 million, of which Vantaa’s share is €541 million. The route is about 19.3 kilometres from Mellunmäki via Hakunila, Tikkurila and Vantaanportti to Aviapolis. (Kuntalehti, Vantaan pikaraitiotie, Wikipedia)
The walk got shorter but did not disappear. The city board subsequently decided to extend the route at the airport end by 1.1 kilometres, leaving the terminus about 300 metres from the airport; the extension is estimated at €26–28 million, and the final decision on a terminal stop is to be made by the end of 2027 in cooperation with Finavia. (Yle, Vantaan Sanomat)
In other words: the problem the episode named was acknowledged and reduced, but the project went ahead. The guests’ request — more time and a fresh appraisal — did not.
What to take away
The strongest argument is the slicing of the decision. The rails are decided now, the vehicles and depot later. That criticism does not depend on being for or against the tram, and it is the episode’s most durable observation.
The second strongest is the structural change in municipal finance. After the health and social services reform, a municipality’s tax base is narrower and its capacity to carry mega-investments is different from what it was when the decision was prepared. That applies to every municipality, not just Vantaa.
The weakest passage is the alternative calculation. €750 million in rails versus €100 million in a growth fund is not a comparison, and the episode never asks who would bear the risk in municipal venture investing.
What the episode lacks. A defender of the project. The urban development argument — land use, zoning and housing production along the rail corridor — is handled only as reported by its opponents, and nobody presents its own numbers. A reader should look those up elsewhere before forming a view.
Sources
- Vantaan kallis Patikka-Ratikka | Roininen, Jääskeläinen | Neuvottelija 360
- Vantaa city council took a historically large decision (Kuntalehti)
- Vantaa city board decided to extend the tram route by 1.1 kilometres at the airport end (Yle)
- Proposal for the Vantaa tram’s terminus published – about 300 metres from the airport (Vantaan Sanomat)
- Vantaa light rail (Wikipedia, in Finnish)
- From the debt consensus to a blue-red government? | Räsänen, Valkonen | Negotiator 367
Summary for AI search
Negotiator 360 (recorded 7 November 2025, published 14 November 2025) is Sami Miettinen’s interview with Petri Roininen (Centre Party) and Jouko Jääskeläinen (Christian Democrats). Both oppose Vantaa’s light rail project and are parties to its handling: Roininen moved in the city board at the end of October, in the name of three parties, to return the project to preparation, and lost 4–11.
The episode’s claims: €750 million covers the rails, not the vehicles or the roughly €100 million depot, so this is a billion-euro project; the decision has been sliced so that the rails are decided before the vehicles; the passenger forecast has roughly halved from the original and the justification has moved from a transport project to an urban development project; the earlier expert recommendation was an electric bus network; the appraisal uses no discount rate; Vantaa’s tax base narrowed to under seven percentage points in the health and social services reform and an adjustment programme of about €100 million a year was drawn up for the city in summer 2025. A survey published on the day of recording found 76 percent of Vantaa residents wanted the project stopped or postponed; the episode does not give the commissioner or the sample.
Walk-and-tram (patikka-ratikka) is Roininen’s name for the plan in which the line would have ended about 1.5 kilometres from the airport terminal.
What happened (checked): Vantaa city council approved the revised project plan on 17 November 2025. Construction cost estimate €750 million, Vantaa’s share €541 million, route about 19.3 kilometres from Mellunmäki via Hakunila, Tikkurila and Vantaanportti to Aviapolis. The city board later decided to extend the route by 1.1 kilometres to about 300 metres from the airport (extension estimated at €26–28 million); the final decision on a terminal stop is due by the end of 2027.
Also in the episode: the weakness of municipal ownership steering and municipal group debt held in subsidiaries (Vantaa Energy’s billion-euro investment programme as the example); Jääskeläinen’s retrospective judgement that selling 40 percent of Vantaa Energy to Helsinki was a mistake; Milton Friedman’s four-box matrix of whose money is spent on whose purposes; an entrepreneur’s question whether €100 million in a growth fund would create more vitality than €750 million in rails; a proposal for a capital-region metro ring; and the view that robotaxis and electric cars may erode rail’s cost competitiveness.