A waterway decision is a permit decision that is used to grant permission for the installation of aids to navigation and confirm the details of a public channel (section 49 of the Water Traffic Act). The purpose of the procedure is to approve the information reported to Traficom and ensure that information on public channels and aids to navigation are added to nautical charts.
In Traficom’s e-Services, you can apply for a fairway decision and report changes to public waterways using the waterway information notification form.
A waterway decision can concern the designation and installation of new public channels and aids to navigation or the changing or removal of existing ones. Any new information concerning public channels and aids to navigation is also confirmed with a fairway decision. After the decision is issued, the relevant channel and aids to navigation can be presented on printed nautical charts and ENCs. Decisions are announced in Notices to Mariners.
According to the Water Traffic Act (782/2019), the construction, placement, modification, or removal of maritime aids to navigation requires a permit granted by the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency, which is issued in the form of a waterway decision.
The scope of the waterway decision varies according to the project: at its largest, the decision may concern the commissioning of a new waterway or the improvement of the entire waterway; at its smallest, a change to an individual waterway or aid to navigation. The application process is the same in all cases, but the amount of information and attachments to be presented depends on the extent of the change. Small-scale measures can also be implemented without a separate, pre-approved waterway plan.
The application ensures that the waterway and aids to navigation are:
The processing times for fairway decisions have varied between approximately 5 and 30 days, depending on the scope of the project. The processing times have increased as a result of measures implemented under the Government’s productivity programme. It is important to identify and anticipate the impacts on the implementation of fairway projects.
Before submitting the waterway application, the waterway proposal must be sent to the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency at vesivaylarekisteri@vayla.fi for preparation of registry information. The Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency will technically review the proposal.
Information and attachments that may be required in the service:
The maximum size of one appendix is 30 MB. The total permitted appendix size is 45 MB. The permitted file types are: doc, docx, gif, jpeg, jpg, msg, pdf, png, ppt, pptx, rtf, txt, xls, xlsx, zip.
The service requires strong authentication.
Navigate to “Seafarers and Boaters” and open the “Fairways” page. From there, you can access the Application for a waterway decision.
Fill the mandatory fields, if needed, you can save the unfinished report and continue later.
After an approved decision, the objects can be published on official nautical charts and in electronic ENC materials, if charts are available for the area in question. The average processing time for applications is 5–30 days.
Decisions are published in the Notices to Mariners publication (TM).
The procedure for notifying public waterway data is applied in situations where confirmed data according to a waterway decision is reported, e.g. for nautical charts, and/or in cases where one wishes to request changes to waterway data that do not require a new waterway decision.
The notification procedure is applied in particular in the following cases:
In the service, you may need the following information and attachments:
The service requires strong authentication.
Navigate to “Seafarers and Boaters” and open the “Fairways” page. From there, you can access the Notification form for waterway information.
Fill the mandatory fields, if needed, you can save the unfinished report and continue later.
