Arctic rail plans in Finnish transport technopolitics

Last week the Finnish ministry of transport and communications (LVM) published a report on possible / planned Arctic railway connections from Finland (a land locked Arctic state) to neighbouring maritime Arctic states Norway and Russia. (Finnish language publication with more extensive Finnish appendices is here.)

In the aforementioned communique the LVM stated that this was an important European project with the mouth of the minister of transport and communications, Anne Berner:

“The Arctic railway is an important European project that would create a closer link between the northern, Arctic Europe and continental Europe. The connection would improve the conditions for many industries in northern areas. A working group will now start to further examine the routing to Kirkenes,” says Minister of Transport and Communications Anne Berner.

In the accompanying slide presentation attributed to the minister a future of transnational rail network was sketched out as can be seen from this screen capture:

Title translates as "From the Arctic Sea to the European core," page 3 from the presentation by minister Anne Berner 9.3.2018.

This idea of an Arctic European rail link hinges on two mega projects: 1. The Arctic connections from Rovaniemi in Southern Finnish Lapland to the ocean, and 2. The Helsinki-Tallinn rail tunnel (or the Baltic Channel Tunnel, if you will). If built, both are massively expensive, wrought with myriad uncertainties, and – this being the reason for my blog post – systemically disruptive to existing modes of transport.

The first mega project raised a storm on the public forum. While the Finnish transport Authority (LV) had looked into various Arctic Sea rail routes alongside private consulting companies and Norwegian counterparts (In Finnish only: LV report, Sitowise technical report, Ramboll economic and societal impact assessment, in English: Norconsult Arctic Railway report for Jernbanedirektoratet), only one possible route was selected by the ministry for closer inspection. This was the one shown in the picture above.

If built the rail line would cut the Saami area in two and have potentially catastrophic consequences to local ways of life, as was pointed out by numerous commentators in social media (#jäämerenrata on Twitter) and reported by the Finnish State News YLE. I have nothing to add to the critique by Petra Laiti and others on the issue of Saami rights other than to muse that Finnish public institutions and politicians seem to continue to be somewhat tone deaf.

I do however wish to contextualise public debate with a few nuggets and notions from history, which taken together should raise the question: whose politics is this?

The LV report introduction grounds the rail plan to the historic issue of Finland's connections to outside world, on which I've previously done research together with Saara Matala from Aalto University. In short, we've grounded the issue of Finnish winter transport logistics to an ongoing transport system regime confrontation between various state agencies. Some 80+ percent of Finnish foreign trade in 2015 was conducted by sea, through the Baltic. Most of it through a handful of ports on the Finnish coast kept open through the year by state owned and private logistics' companies operating icebreakers. As LV states in their aforementioned rail report, this makes Finnish logistics somewhat vulnerable – A most persistent issue in naval and civil maritime discussions here over the past century.

From this perspective it is curious that none of these, now unfolded, plans discuss this wider logistics infrastructure and security issue. While the LV report goes into details on economic potential and consequences of such a connection, the does not really discuss the relationship between rail and sea if such a project were to be successful. The Baltic tunnel really only appears on the minister's slides and even there as something of a ghost.

Should both mega projects be built, it would have consequences to trade not only though the North-East Passage from China to Europe but to and from European markets to Finland and within the country as well. The administrative conflicts within Finnish government in the 1960s we've documented in our research would quite likely return as ports, shipping companies and connected operators vied for a slice of the economy pie with now strengthened rail operators. Such discussion were had in the 1950s, when the state board of transport authorities recommended focusing on icebreakers and marine traffic. They were had in the 1920s, when Finnish foreign trade took westward turn and the country look to Europe for it's future. The state civil maritime administration (MKH, now split into LV, Trafi and Arctia among others) was successful in slowly building a marine transport first strategy over these decades. It is not a coincidence that so much of Finnish trade travels by ship.

Current global transport mega structures rely on plentiful very large carriers to transport materials and goods across the oceans. The size and capacity of this global fleet has boomed over the past decades due to a number of issues. Russian actors are interested in developing the North-East Passage for their economic opportunities and leading Finland based companies in Arctic maritime technology remain tightly connected to this process. At the same time Russia is invested in developing trans Eurasian rail linkages to China. It remains to be seen, whether an Arctic maritime route can compete against in a meaningful and economically viable way with these pre-existing logistics' systems and their global path dependencies. The economic impact and return to invest of any Finnish Arctic rail project hinges on such economic arithmetic.

And so, whose politics is this?

Who would benefit from shifting Finnish logistics hubs northward? Who would gain from a rail first strategy and who would loose? What arguments are being made and what issues are silent from the reports and PR brochures? Therein lays an essential technopolitical argument that many might not want to have. Will you? Will your parliamentary MP?

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I was not paid to write this by anyone. I remain responsible for my public statements, same as everyone. My interest in this issue is academic and my primary motivation in writing this stems from my understanding on the third mission of academia in engaging the wider society. I'm currently working on my PhD at the University of Helsinki on Finnish shipbuilding industry–state relations 1918-1954 and the technopolitics of heavy manufacturing industry with a Kone Foundation grant. I'm also the editor-in-chief for the Finnish journal for the history of technology, Tekniikan Waiheita.

Self-assessment as PhD tool: some thoughts on process and pedagogy

Well this log hasn't been updated for some time. A part of me is disappointed while another is content with the reality of these past six months. This being the case, I decided to to collect my thoughts on self-assessment as a learning tool in doctoral studies. The following text is therefore highly subjective and somewhat personal in nature.

I became cognisant of monthly self-assessment as a meaningful tool during our doctoral program's start your studies seminar (Väitöskirja käyntiin) in 2014. This monthly review of progress was recommended by my good friend and longtime model for being a historian, Jaakko Tahkokallio. In his seminar presentation Jaakko talked about his process, the good and difficult and the bad. Ever so passingly he mentioned that at some point he undertook monthly evaluations to see, whether thing were progressing as planned. This was a revelation!

I'm a strong believer in developing process agilely. I prefer to understand the meta in any job I do and through that reflect where I need help, development, and tools for better command of my work. As far as I understand this relates to my highly rhythmic temperament. I do routine well and having understood this, can influence my life by intentionally and systematically targeting my routines. I didn't learn this during my studies but with help from significant others, when I decided upon a 30 something health overhaul. Still the same personal, psychological tools apply.

First, understanding emotions related to work, professional identity and professional community has been really hard. Finns (especially CIS men) tend to have built their identity around work and professionalism. This applies extremely well to me. Yet we don't always do emotions that well. Success, failure, interaction and status issues all apply on an emotional level. I found the linked column "Want to lose weight? Train the brain, not the body" by Laurel Mellin extremely helpful in this. As the title shows, this didn't happen in my academic training. Still that's what I've largely used it for. I also participated in a pilot program started by my pension fund (MELA) with TJS Opintokeskus (the info is only in Finnish). This put me in touch with professional work consultants used to operating with academically trained professionals and possibly more importantly with my peers, with whom I've been able to process practically everything.

Peer support is the second essential component I wish to stress herein. Various informal and formal networks have sprung up among PhD students in Helsinki and statewide during my studies. Still, these take time to develop and many can become unintentionally closed groups for friends. The support structures for unfunded doctoral students are still most fragile and many students can and do stay alone with their insecurities, unrealistically high expectations, fears and such. Participating in support structures takes active effort and so far projects like the one linked above, demand having a grant in the first place.

This leads me back to self-assessment. Why did I decide to take part? As I've noted before in an earlier post, it became a perceived need during a monthly review of progress. Mine follows this pattern:

• How did the last month go? Emotions, successes, failures, whatever comes to mind.
• PhD work progress in detail. What got done, what didn't, why?
• Other studies, projects, events and networks: what's happening, what's taking time?
• Content analysis: ideas, problems and possibilities related directly to my thesis.
• Funding issues: I feel this needs to be addressed regularly in order to cope with the monumental feelings of deficiency and frustration involved.
• To do: what's coming up during the next six months or so?

A colleague of mine has developed this further and uses a purpose built IT tool to manage todo-workload. Long to mid term stuff moves into short term lists during self-assessment and so forth. I just use a text file, so whatever works, works.

During my short stint in London, I was supervised in this process: monthly meetings with the professor and rundown on everything I had done and was planning to do. It felt a little heavy handed but this might be related to my own progress and process. Such close guidance will work for some, especially early on. It doesn't do away with personal development as that is a real development goal in learning to become a researcher. Still we could do more in recognising it as such and defending the necessary pedagogical resources involved. As it stands, I feel this issue is insufficiently addressed currently but as always YMMV.

Having said that, things are progressing and they must. The crunch in funding and temporal resources of doctoral education is putting a lot of pressure on university teaching staff and recent cutbacks have seemingly done nothing to help them manage their own responsibilities as support personnel and structures have been slashed and administration restructured. Academia is running up the hill, but is there cliff at end? I hope not.

Personal development in research education is necessary but it should not mean solitary development. Some academic survivors of yore may have learnt inopportune or even downright problematic survival mechanisms but that doesn't mean anyone, anywhere should. I hope recent programs, systemic pedagogical processes and peer help mechanisms survive and flourish. Should they do so, is entirely up to us and that is why at this late hour (in my PhD studies that is) I continue to participate.