One of those trapped on the train in Romeriksporten on Monday 12 December is university lecturer Kjetil A. Vedøy. He later wrote an article on news Ytring about what he believes reveals a “dangerous safety culture in Bane Nor”. We sincerely understand that Kjetil A. Vedøy and all the other travelers who were stuck inside a train without electricity for many hours found it uncomfortable and perhaps also frightening. They are also fully entitled to ask questions about the handling of the situation. We are very sorry that the travelers were affected by power cuts in this way. That the situation was experienced as both unsustainable and chaotic, as Vedøy describes, I and my colleagues deeply regret. It shouldn’t be like this. However, that does not mean that there was a lack of control over security, and this is exactly what it is important for me to assure all our travelers of. The railways in Norway are Europe’s second safest according to the annual report from the EU’s railway agency ERA. Only Great Britain is lower than Norway, measured in the number of fatal accidents per million train kilometers driven in the years 2018–2020. This is not accidental. Our vision is to become the safest railway in Europe, and we work towards this every single day. When we now talk about the incident in Romeriksporten on Monday, it is important to distinguish between accidents and faults in infrastructure or trains, which cause the trains to stop. We work continuously to avoid both, but safety must always come first. The fact that the travelers were not evacuated from the train was precisely for reasons of safety. The live solitaire was outside the train, and our assessment was that the passengers were safe inside the train, but not outside. We worked as quickly as we could to secure both the train and the catenary. If we were faced with a fire with a risk to life and health, we would of course act differently. In such situations, we have another type of preparedness where the emergency services are also involved, and then we also have to accept a higher risk during rescue. In his post, Vedøy compares us to the airline industry. A flight captain would never tell the passengers that “there is so much mechanical in this plane, so an accident is bound to happen”. I’m not saying that either, here I haven’t been clear enough in my message in the media: When I talk about the fact that we have complex and mechanical equipment that will also fail in the future, it’s about errors that stop train traffic. I am not talking about accidents where life and health are at risk. Those who travel a lot by plane know that planes are grounded every day due to technical problems. Of course, the pilot does not take off if he knows there is something wrong with the plane he is sitting in. The same applies to train traffic. We only drive when we know it is safe for the passengers. This is also part of the background for many of the delays that travelers are unfortunately currently experiencing. We will learn from what happened in Romeriksporten. We have already gone through the incident thoroughly, both internally and together with the train companies Vy and Flytoget, to see what we can do better and faster if we were to find ourselves in a similar situation. In Bane Nor, we are far from satisfied with the number of errors and delays that have affected travelers in 2022, especially now at the end of the year. We have an old infrastructure that requires a lot of maintenance and renewal. It is demanding work, but we will do what we can for a better customer experience in 2023. FOLLOW THE DEBATE:
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Norwegian railways among the safest in Europe – Statement
