I take the train every day to work. There are delays almost daily. Usually the delays are just a couple of minutes, but at least once a week a train gets cancelled during rush hour. During rush hour there are trains every 10 minutes. According to the Norwegian rail company Vy, a full train in the rush hour replaces 600 cars on the road. Typically during a commute there are 1.2 to 1.5 occupants per car. Taking the lower estimate, a train during rush hour carries at least 720 people, so for every minute that a train is delayed, 720 minutes (12 human hours) are wasted.
Let's assume that the rush hour runs from 7:00 to 9:00 and from 15:30 to 17:30. There are 24 trains between Asker and Oslo during these periods. A lower bound on the delays may be 1 minute on average. This means that at least 24 trains x 12 human hours wasted per train = 288 human hours wasted per day, or 12 full days are wasted every day. Over the course of a year this amounts to 12 human days wasted per work day x 220 work days per year = 2,640 human days wasted per year, or 7.2 human years every year.
And this is just from people who commute from Asker to Oslo. Add the people who commute the opposite way and the number doubles. Add those who commute from Lillestrøm and those who commute from Ski, and this becomes 6 times as large. Every year more than 42 human years are wasted because of delays. Given that life expectancy in Norway is 83 years and the median age of the Norwegian population is 40 years, the Norwegian rail is effectively killing a person every year.
I am obviously joking, but the cost of delays is no joke. The Norwegian Institute of Transport Economics studied the value of commuter's time in 20218. The value per hour for delays in local train traffic in the Oslo area came to 270 NOK per hour, which adjusted for inflation from 2018 to 2024, comes to around 333 NOK per hour, or roughly 33 USD. Forty-two years of delays are equivalent to 367,920 hours, thus costing Norwegian society approximately 121 million NOK or 12 million USD. This number is a conservative estimate that accounts only for minimal delays during rush hour. In my experience there are delays throughout the day. Even though train occupancy is much lower outside rush hours, the numbers add up.
It is not fun to be robbed every day. For a typical commuter, delays cost 2,442 NOK per year (244 USD), but the worst part is the uncertainty, the frustration, and the cold of waiting on the platform during winter when temperatures routinely stay below -10°C (14°F).
I often hear that the Nordic climate is a challenge, but it snows in Switzerland and parts of Japan too, and they seem to manage to run their trains on time just fine. I have taken trains in both countries. Most recently I spent 15 days in Japan. I took many local trains, the majority of them in Tokyo, and not a single one was delayed.
I asked Claude.ai for insights into why Japan and Switzerland manage to run their commuter trains on time while Norwegian commuter trains are chronically late, and it came back with some interesting ideas.
Japan and Switzerland both have higher infrastructure investment per kilometer of track and per passenger. Switzerland has the world's highest rail investment as a percentage of GDP.—Why can't the richest nation on earth at least match Switzerland?
Use of clock-face scheduling for the whole network (Switzerland) or very high frequency of trains traveling at reduced speed (Japan).
Extensive preventive maintenance and upgrades in both Switzerland and Japan.
In Oslo, commuter trains share tracks with long-distance passenger and freight services. When one of those runs late, it cascades through the commuter network.—This seems like a lack of investment problem to me.
Many of Oslo's commuter lines still operate on single-track sections where trains must wait for incoming traffic.
Oslo still operates with older signaling technology that requires larger safety buffers between trains. Japan's urban networks use advanced automatic train control systems allowing much closer spacing and more precise timing.
In Oslo, maintenance conducted during evenings and weekends is often delayed, and these delays carry into the following day's morning peaks. Japanese operators use extremely short maintenance windows (often 2-4 hours nightly) with rapid deployment teams.
Use of older, less reliable trains in Oslo. When a train breaks down in a single-track section or at a key junction, the entire line collapses.
To sum up. the most probable causes identified by Claude.ai boil down to lack of investment and maintenance. I want to propose an additional factor that may also affect the lack of progress in addressing all these known issues: incompetence at the top over long time.
To give an example, the current Norwegian railway director is an economist with a long career as a civil servant, but with zero relevant qualifications for his post. The only thing remotely relevant on his résumé was the year he spent as transportation director for the sinking ship that was Viken county.
Viken county was a fusion (later reversed) of three counties in the Oslo area: Akershus, Buskerud and Østfold. Transport infrastructure was—and still is—hopelessly fragmented among the three adjacent counties. The most pressing problem was the lack of an integrated tariff system in the region. Akershus and Oslo have Ruter, which covers bus, train, metro and tram services, but the other two counties were not part of the system. There is a lot of commuter traffic from Buskerud (mainly Drammen) and Østfold into Oslo, but commuters have to navigate a patchwork of different companies and buy separate tickets.
The transportation director's job was to fix that mess, and he failed miserably. While he was still transportation director at Viken county, he was invited to apply for the position of railway director. He did and promptly got the new position. The three-month notice period that was standard for Viken employees was even waived for him.—I have written before about the lack of corruption in Norway 😉.
The highlight of his tenure as railway director so far, has been the renewal of the license to operate the airport express train. During the tender process, Flytoget, the company that currently provides the extremely punctual service and that apparently submitted a better offer, did not get its license renewed. As a consequence, Flytoget will be merged with Vy, the company that operates commuter trains, thus effectively eliminating all competition in rail transport in the Oslo area. This does not bode well for the future of rail in Oslo.
Last updated: 2025-06-29