NEWS ANALYSIS: Train service in Norway has been unreliable for decades, and more than 25 percent of trains in the Oslo area failed to run on time last month. A complete collapse that halted all trains all over the country on Christmas Day, though, marked a new climax in Norway’s railroad drama that just keeps rolling and isn’t being fixed.
The Christmas Day collapse started early Wednesday morning, continued all day and into the evening, just when thousands of Norwegians were heading home or in between social gatherings during the height of the holiday season. It wasn’t until close to 9pm that the state railroad agency BaneNOR, responsible for the national rail system, could report that the problem “in BaneNOR’s own IT systems” had been found, isolated and finally corrected.
Only then could trains from Bodø in the north to Halden in the south and everywhere in between get back on track. They’d been parked at the stations nearest to where they’d been, when a communications system between engineers on the trains and centralized traffic operations broke down nearly 13 hours earlier, apparently over a fault in the firewall that’s supposed to protect it. The trains didn’t get fully back on schedule until Thursday morning, and BaneNOR director Arild Nybrodahl apologized “in the strongest of terms to everyone who had their travel plans interrupted on Christmas Day.”
The entire train system had to shut down for safety reasons, claimed BaneNOR’s chief executive Thor Gjermund Eriksen, who appeared defensive when interviewed live on state broadcaster NRK Wednesday evening. “It’s a complex system, therefore it took time,” said Eriksen, who was head of NRK and then the state lottery system Norsk Tipping before taking over at BaneNOR a year ago. “We had to prioritize the safety of our passengers and halt the trains to avoid having them stuck on board for a lengthy period.”
Eriksen was also quick to deny there’d been any cyber attack on the system, claimed the problem was not tied to technical upgrades or that any “foreign powers” were involved at a time of war in Europe and recent threats from Russia. Eriksen admitted it was “unfortunate” that the train system stood still for more than 12 hours but defended BaneNOR’s management, staff and their technical expertise: “We have very competent people” working at BaneNOR, he claimed.
That’s been a subject of great debate ever since BaneNOR was first created eight years ago as part of attempts by the former Conservatives-led government to reform the already-troubled train and rail system in Norway. BaneNOR is responsible for railroad infrastructure, and the state auditor’s office (Riksrevisjon) concluded as early as 2020 that it had not managed to improve operational stability. The state auditors also concluded that the transport ministry had little information about how billions of extra kroner allocated to the railroad was being spent, especially since service remained unreliable even as executive salaries rose into the millions.
At least around NOK 40 billion of BaneNOR’s funding, note critics, was spent on building the ill-fated Follobanen high-speed train tunnel connecting Oslo and the commuter suburb of Ski, which had to close shortly after it opened in December 2022. It had already caused embarrassment for BaneNOR, and has continued to do so.
BaneNOR’s Christmas collapse is also far from its first, given all the other occasions when train service has been halted, making commuters often late for work. The system was set up to separate responsibility for railroad infrastructure and railway operations, but it often turns out that the various entities involved can blame each other when problems occur. Commuters and other travelers have complained for years about far too many signal errors, too few trains in operation, too few on time and maintenance projects that are long overdue. Vy, which runs most trains in the Oslo area, had to face a spike in dissatisfied customers last fall and a revolt from frustrated commuters, especially since the new BaneNOR chief Eriksen had promised light at the end of the tunnel.
The three major operators Vy (formerly the national railway NSB), SJ (which runs line from Oslo to Trondheim and northwards) and GoAhead (Oslo-Kristiansand-Stavanger) have already warned they’ll be filing claims against BaneNOR for all the trouble on Christmas Day. Rikke Lind, chief executive at SJ, called the breakdown “unacceptable,” as did the commuter association Pendlerforeningen.
Newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) editorialized on Saturday that BaneNOR can’t possibly be well-organized when such problems occur again and again. DN could also point to the most recent state auditor’s reports that show a lack of coordination among all the players involved in Norway’s train system, poor maintenance of rail lines and a failure by BaneNOR to follow up and correct problems revealed back in 2020.
Jo Moen Bredeveien, commentator in newspaper Dagsavisen, wrote on Saturday that “The railroad in Norway is a scandal … we just can’t manage to transport people and goods by train. That means our country can’t hang together in the manner we’d like. That’s difficult to believe, and impossible to accept in such a wealthy and modern society as ours.”
Transport Minister Jon-Ivar Nygård of the Labour Party, who has promised better train service over his past three years in office, said he could understand how the Christmas collapse frustrated and angered passengers who were stranded all over the country.
“As a passenger you have a right to be taken where you’re going when a train is cancelled,” Nygård told NRK. In this case, with all trains cancelled, it was also difficult for train operators Vy, GoAhead and SJ Nord to mount all the bus service needed. In some cases, passengers on long-distance routes were offered flights to where they were going, but it remained a challenge to get from their stranded trains to airports.
Vy managed to call in more than 100 buses but had to admit it was “difficult” to meet demand and it took a lot of time. Passengers could also take taxis and then seek refunds from Vy and other operators if they later were unable to arrange alternative transport.
Trains didn’t start running on schedule again until Thursday morning. Lind of SJ is demanding an external evaluation of the Christmas collapse, while Vy was “reminding” BaneNOR that it expects full compensation for the costs of finding alternative transport for its passengers.
Several stranded passengers interviewed at various locations around seemed almost resigned to all the trouble. “They probably do as best they can, but it’s sad how this happens,” one man told NRK. DN questions the entire reform of train system operations during the former government, which has been criticized for lacking an examination of its consequences.
“The consequences could be seen on Christmas Day,” wrote DN. “BaneNOR doesn’t manage to deliver the services for which it’s responsible. They need the ‘overview’ they lack.”
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund