Saturday, October 28

 

 

We all got up late. Outside the heavy rain appeared to have melted most of the snow.

After brunch Irma drove Naa to Kirjamessu, the annual book fair, where she met Sampo. I did the Saturday cleaning while she did this. Hours passed because Irma had decided to stop at Prisma on the way back.

The rain eases but Sunshine, having gone out earlier and returned a few minutes ago to eat, decides to sit and watch the weather from the window. In fact he drapes himself over the radiator to dry himself off and get warm again. He will sit there for an hour or more, until Irma returns.

At 17:00 we will leave for Lautasaari, because Sanal has invited us for dinner. His sister, Geeta, has come to Helsinki for a couple of days, and her daughter Maina has also arrived. Teija, who we know from the Indian Embassy, will join us all. We will sit and talk and eat and drink for a couple of hours and have an enjoyable time.
We will see the new Lautasaari metro station, which lies about 50 metres from Sanal’s apartment. It stands waiting for the western metro extension to finally open, something that should have happened a year ago and may not happen for another year. According to Wikipedia

the construction began in November 2009. In February 2014, rock blasting was complete, and the fitting out of the tunnels and construction of the stations was ongoing. The extension was planned to open on 15 August 2016 but is currently delayed for an unknown time.

According to YLE, on September 19 Ville Lehmuskoski, CEO of Helsinki City Transport said that he “that he believes that seven new Metro stations will be handed over by the Länsimetro company this week. After a test period of 2-3 weeks, he expects it to open to passengers sometime in October.” The problem though, lies in the fact that the “Metro needs to work without major problems for two weeks. After that has been successfully carried out, we can inform Helsinki Region Transport Authority (HSL) that the Metro is ready for passenger transportation.”
So far the metro has run in test mode every day since the handover and has not passed a single test.