Highway 5 upgrade starts in Leppävirta with lower speed limits

Work on the Highway 5 upgrade in Leppävirta, North Savo, began on Monday, with speed limits lowered along the route, Yle reports. The first phase covers 16 kilometres and will turn the road into a central-barrier passing-lane road.

The project includes 15 bridge locations, five grade-separated junctions and noise barriers along nine kilometres. A parallel road will also be built for slow-moving and local traffic.

Harri Liikanen, project manager at the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency, said the upgrade would improve traffic flow and safety on what he described as a bottleneck on an important eastern Finnish route.

The speed limit has initially been reduced to 80 kilometres per hour. Kalle Willman, project manager for contractor GRK Suomi, said it would eventually fall to 50 kilometres per hour across the construction zone.

“That guarantees the safety of workers and road users,” Willman said, adding that restrictions would not be lowered unnecessarily. Blasting and excavation work will also require traffic to be stopped temporarily.

Tom Hotti, who recently moved from Varkaus to Kuopio, drives to Varkaus every weekday. He expects his usual 50-minute journey to take up to 15 minutes longer each way.

Bus driver Samu Vainikainen, who operates the Varkaus to Kuopio route for Soisalon Liikenne, said the journey would become significantly slower and that bus schedules would likely have to be adjusted.

The wider project will also include a new motorway section. In total, about 33 kilometres of new road will be built from south of Leppävirta to the southern end of Kuopio’s existing motorway.

An emergency landing strip for the Finnish Air Force will be built along the motorway section near the village of Paukarlathi. The project is expected to be completed in 2030 and has a total cost of 212 million euros.