VR expects claims for compensation from inconvenienced rail travellers

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Thursday's disastrous scenes in the morning rush-hour could prove costly for Finnish Railways (VR).
      The company expects to receive an influx of claims for compensation as a result of the rail traffic chaos caused by a computer malfunction in the Greater Helsinki area on Thursday.
      Tens of thousands of commuters were left waiting in vain for a train in the normally busy time from 6:00 to 9:00. Dozens of departures were cancelled.
      ”We expect that the number of claims for compensation will be huge”, says Director Antti Jaatinen, in charge of passenger services at VR.
     
On Thursday evening, the Helsinki region rail traffic was almost back to normal, even though the trains on the line from the capital towards Turku were still delayed. In order to avoid a similar chaos to that of yesterday, all departures of the E train from Helsinki to Kauklahti and back have been cancelled until this evening.
      In fact, further cancellations can be expected until the situation has improved. At present the Espoo rail traffic is managed by just one person locally and manually.
      The original fault has been found, and it is currently being repaired, VR reports.
     
As for compensation, VR intends to refund the commuters only for the costs incurred by delays and cancelled departures. Inconvenience and annoyance are not quite enough, though they are doubtless in plentiful supply. Unused tickets will also be redeemed.
      Application forms for claims can be printed from the VR website or picked up from railway stations.
     
The traffic chaos was caused by computer problems. The connection between the remote rail traffic control centre in Helsinki and the regional control system in Espoo crashed on the night between Wednesday and Thursday.
      By 6:00 in the morning, the malfunction had affected the remote control system of all lines in and out of Helsinki, affecting commuter and long-distance traffic alike.
     
A good many commuters complained not just at the lack of service but also at the fact that Finnish Rail failed to provide enough information to passengers of what was going on.
      The remote traffic control system of Helsinki (Helka) has apparently been overloaded as new track sections have been added to the network recently.
      The aim is to replace the present traffic and safety management system by a new one with more capacity by the end of 2010.
      ”We are now considering how to incease the capacity of the Helka system”, reports Nummelin.
     
Minister of Transport Anu Vehviläinen expects to have an accurate report on the most recent failure at the earliest opportunity.
      This is not the first report of this kind passed to the minister: VR and the Finnish Rail Administration filed similar documents in February and before that last September, and in both cases there were promises about improved punctuality and improved information to stranded passengers.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Computer glitch causes chaos on morning commuter trains (9.10.2008)

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