Objective of the projectThe overall objective of the project is to strengthen the local and regional sustainable economic development. The specific objective is to develop the Niirala area to improve the transport connections between Finland/EU and Russia. Main activities• To complete the final designs/plans for the needed infrastructure works.• To make final specifications for the needed technical equipment.• To carry out necessary tendering procedures.• To complete the road construction and purchase/installation of the controlling and monitoring equipment. Achievements: The construction work consists of new traffic lane 3,2 km, parking area, road lighting construction and traffic control arrangements (fixed and variable).With these measures, border-crossing takes place more quickly, as the new additional lanes and checkpoints make it possible to check passenger traffic on the lanes so that passengers do not have to get out of their cars.The capacity of the border-crossing point will increase such that it will be sufficient to meet the estimated growth in border-crossing traffic for the remainder of this decade. It has been estimated that the solutions of this project can take care of two million border-crossers annually. If traffic develops to exceed this limits, a new checkpoint for those exiting the country is needed. In that case, the current checkpoint will remain for use for traffic entering the country.