Better news for commuters. Local trains in the Helsinki region kept to their schedules in August better than at any time in the past three years.
According to the state-owned railway company VR, 96.9 per cent of local trains reached their destinations within three minutes of their scheduled arrivals.
Half of one per cent of local trains were more than ten minutes late, or were cancelled.
Over the whole June-August period, 93.6 per cent of trains were on schedule. Railway maintenance at Vantaankoski was the reason for the slightly poorer figure.
In June 98.2 per cent of long-distance trains reached their destinations within five minutes of schedule.
The result was five percentage points better than in the previous summer.
The acid test for VR will of course come in the winter months: recent years have seen disgruntled commuters stranded on chilly station platforms all too often, as Finland's once-vaunted reputation for public transport that never skips a beat took something of a pounding.
