Passenger trains approaching Helsinki’s Central Railway Station often have to stop for several minutes to wait for a free rail shortly before the final destination.
VR does not keep statistics on such brief delays, but passengers say that there have become more frequent ever since the completion of the new track between Kerava and Lahti.
Some commuters say that the delays have caused them to be late for work. One frequent traveller told Helsingin Sanomat that three of his five most recent trips involved delays. The longest wait was ten minutes. Mauno Haapala, head of transport at the Finnish railway company VR says that the delays are usually short - just a minute or two.
He notes that congestion can be a problem especially during peak hours, when even a short delay in the departure can force an arriving train to wait for the track to become available.
"There can be many reasons for a delayed departure. Often the reason is that a train is waiting for passengers who are running to catch it at the last minute. Now we have given instructions that trains must leave on time even if there are people running on the platforms. Naturally we get negative feedback for not waiting for them."
Haapala admits that there has been an increase in delays in recent times. "We record the cause of a delay only if the stop has lasted for over three minutes. But there are not very many of those. If the wait lasts that long, there is usually a special reason. A switch problem is the most common."
He attributes the situation to the sharp increase in train traffic.
"On weekdays there are 850 commuter train arrivals and departures, in addition to 350 long-distance trains. Less than ten years ago there were only 450 local trains a day. We cannot increase the number of departures any more", Haapala says.
The bottleneck is the Linnunlaulu area in the final approach to the station, where there are just 11 tracks, which then fan out to the station, which has 19 tracks.
