Train delays take 11 days of commuter's life during 20 years.

Kari Malin is on his 12th and last notebook

print this

By Paavo Tukkimäki
     
      At the age of 63, Kari Malin is on his 12th and last small notebook.
      At the beginning of next year, the construction contractor retires, and will no longer commute regularly by train to work and back between Riihimäki and Pasila station in Helsinki. He also will no longer record how well the trains that he rides keep to their schedules.
      For each of this trips he records the scheduled and actual departure time, and the number of minutes of a possible delay. There is also a separate column for miscellaneous remarks.
      “My watch has been checked, and it is accurate”, Malin insists.
     
By the end of October this year Malin had recorded 8,133 commutes from 1986 - over a period of “23.83 years”. The entries are made immediately, and the books are meticulously kept up to date.
      Malin recorded a total of 16,853 minutes worth of late arrivals - adding up to 11 days, 16 hours, and 53 minutes that Malin has lost to train delays.
      Passenger time has been assigned a specific monetary value in rail transport - calculated at about EUR 7.00 an hour. On this basis, the Finnish railway company VR could be seen to owe Malin about EUR 2,000.
      However, the sum should be shared: one study has shown that a third of responsibility for train delays lies with VR, another third with the Finnish Rail Administration, and the rest are caused by factors for which it would be hard to pin blame on anyone.
     
Malin applies the same three-minute leeway to his recorded delays that VR uses in its local transport.
      However, a small inconsistency has crept into his bookkeeping: he no longer uses the slower regional trains for his commutes, opting instead for the more comfortable and faster IC trains.
      In these long-distance trains, the delay threshold is five minutes - a train is considered ‘late’ if its actual arrival time is more than five minutes behind schedule.
      Malin has nevertheless adhered to his three-minute limit so that he might be able to compare the data from the whole period.
     
Malin started keeping records of the train delays because he felt that his trains always seemed to run late. This feeling was best borne out in 2001, when fewer than a third of his trains were on schedule.
      In 1988, on the other hand, Malin was on time at the final station 85 times out of 100.
      VR’s own figures for its commuter services indicate that it was on schedule 96 per cent of the time - just short of its goal of 97.5 per cent.
      Malin’s figure is 74 per cent.
      This is far below the 90 per cent goal that VR has placed for schedule adherence for its long-distance trains. VR exceeded its own goal in January-October this year, when 90.4 per cent of its trains were on schedule.
      Kari Malin says that he is “fairly satisfied with the result”.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 22.11.2009


Links:
  Finnish Rail Administration website
  VR website

PAAVO TUKKIMÄKI / Helsingin Sanomat
paavo.tukkimaki@hs.fi