Railway’s popularity kept rising in 2017

2017 definitely was a really busy period for the railway with the popularity of train travel climbing without a pause all through the year.

The domestic railway’s long-distance service posted an 8 per cent growth year-on-year, with the total passenger count rising to 12.5 million in the year, said the national railway operator VR Group in a press release.

In the peak month of December alone, 1.1 million journeys were made by trains. The strong growth in VR Group’s business has been attributed to a cut in ticket prices and more trains running on the tracks.

The travel volume had been on a steady rise throughout the year posting growths ranging from 15 per cent plus on some main routes to as high as 48 per cent on the Helsinki-Oulu line.

VR in 2017 added 65 weekly trains to its long-distance train service.

The railway traffic between Russia and Finland also registered an impressive rise of 21 per cent in 2017. In total, nearly 550,000 passengers travelled between Helsinki and St Petersburg, mostly by the Allegro trains. The busiest period on this line was the turn of the year that saw 40,000 passengers.

The number of Asian train travellers also sustained its increasing trend, mostly going to Lapland by night trains, coming up with nearly half a million night train journeys made in 2017.

In total, about 700,000 passengers used railway to reach Lapland in 2017, which was 4 per cent more than that in 2016.

The level of customer satisfaction, too, improved considerably in 2017. In particular, the train conductors’ amiability and professionalism, as well as travelling comfort and safety gained positive feedback from the railway passengers.