European Railroad Discussion > Finland: VR in Serious Problems

VR-Yhtyma of Helsinki is facing serious problems. With its main largest customer HSL angry as noted on this thread http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?17,2565675 (European Railroad Discussion > Finland: Should it Rain, Snow or the Sun Shine...) its end users around Helsinki area totally fed up, other cities around Helsinki disappointed and the press has started a campaign pinpointing the VR troubles (what could be easier now) in the Metropolitan area the monopoly operator will face very difficult times in the coming years. I will collect here a series of 5 - 10 threads pinpointing the unfortunate things that are happening around VR-Yhtyma. The sources are all in the other media and inside the company itself so I did not invent anything. And of course I'm not totally happy having lost several hours of time with delayed / cancelled poorly working VR local trains even in September.

The Helsingin Sanomat, a quality newspaper with 2,5 million daily readers, has also gotten tired of the monopoly operator that has not been able to run trains. The following are from the papers main article this week. The main articles was based on the radio interview of the CEO Mikael Aro who is in a difficult situation with a mammoth poorly working organization. Aro apologized from the customers telling them that "the company is wrong and the customer is here right". According to the source it was however seen that Aro failed to consider, if there were some problems in the corporate culture that had caused the ongoing problems. It is seen that the VR is still more like a bureaucratic organization than an efficiently working company serving customers that it is supposed to be. The article goes on that with the latest ticketing problems the consumer has rights: "there is no new ticketing system (that is the next story), if now tickets exist any more, if no tickets exist, the consumer has been betrayed". At the same time it is seen that VR is investing massively on the long distance: 100 new coaches, 100 electric locos and 100 diesel locomotives are arriving starting next year. This is an investment of over 800 million euros. Here it is seen that "even if the company can acquire locos that actually can run in below zero temperatures, the tracks and the service must operate too", all weak points at the moment. This concludes the main article written by the main reporter of the largest quality newspaper in the country. No need to guess VR has some difficult years ahead with very few people thinking positively about them.


The pictures:
1) Finnish, Swedish and English for cancelled trains, this sign is seen almost daily and all too often on the Helsinki commuter traffic. Normally this also means the platforms are crowded, unlike here in Malmi hub, where the buses serve all the directions as well, very efficiently. Operators HKL, Veolia, Nobina, VR Transpoint plus around 10 smaller companies run around 2000 buses daily.

2) When VR is facing problems with its trains / personnel / ticket sales / you name it / ... they run the night shift trains during the day, N = Night shift for the south-north main line traffic. The trouble doing this is that it takes all too long for the commuters at the furthest stations to reach their destinations withing Helsinki. But for now, these trains are running every day, except during the rush hours (this has improved a little).

3) Junakalusto owned, but VR operated Sm5 Flirt train stopping at Malmi. VR has not bought any local trains for a decade. Luckily here the train is a low floored Flirt, on the normal VR train the baby trolley would have to be raised over half a meter / 2 feet and carried up the narrow steps of the train.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/11 23:08 by McKey.

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Thanks for this background.

The evolution of large bureaucratic companies into efficient customer centered companies is rarely easy.

This is very unfortunate. In 2004 and 2005, when I was working in Finland, I cannot remember being more than 2 or 3 minutes off schedule on trains between Helsinki and Turku, and between Turku and Tampere. I rarely rode the Helsinki commuter trains. Did they perform better then? You mentioned that new electric and diesel locomotives and passenger cars are scheduled to arrive starting next year. That makes it seem like the investment in them was made just a year or two too late. Who controlled that investment, VR management or the government? Gerry

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
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> Thanks for this background.
>
> The evolution of large bureaucratic companies into
> efficient customer centered companies is rarely
> easy.

Yes and no! I am often surprised at how customer oriented SNCF can be and surely this behemoth is the typical large bureaucratic state company.

My wife firmly believes that some of the Train Operating Companies in Britain are no better than the old state service simply because they inherited the same staff. I cannot argue that this is true but I do know that when Arriva won the Cross Country franchise from Virgin that nothing changed except the paint on the trains! Same (generally very good) people, same service, same timekeeping!

Customer service depends entirely on senior management's attitude. When Gordon Bethune was CEO of Continental Airlines, that company offered the best experience of flying an American airline. The reason was simple, the staff loved the man as he was one of them. Robert Crandall ran American Airlines at that time and the contrast couldn't have been greater.

You are absolutely right Gerry, this collapse of good railroading is quite a new phenomenon, no more than 5 years, but now it seems to be getting worse every year. In 2005 everything worked still quite well, but after that the Metropolitan Helsinki train traffic has doubled, but VR rolling stock just aged. So they can not manage capacity miracles every day, and when they don't we often see the whole system collapsing.

The story has many sides. The VR invested 40 million of its own money in 2009 for track building up North near Oulu (to keep its track gangs employed in the opening competition situation). This investment money to track keeping by European standards should had come from the government, _not_ the operator, who is supposed to keep the trains running. So VR could not see its real problems in the South probably due to just ignoring the gravity of the situation. So 40 million was wasted on the investment, where the planes are now taking passengers away from trains, since the route is so long from Helsinki to Oulu and beyond for running trains efficiently. If VR had invested this 40 million to additional Flirt (Sm5) trains, the company would now be hero. You can think that it takes years for the EMU deliveries, yes it takes unless you are Biela Russia, Norway NSB or Estonian Edelraudtee, when it only takes a year or two. Why could not VR had used its influence here? Now they are the one blamed instead of being the hero of the story.

The new coach orders are for long distance, which the company in many cases still handles well, except for missing ellocos. Some of the stock are going to be driving trailers. I'll go into details later when more info is available from the manufacturer Tranctech.
The new electric locos are very urgently needed to replace the Wolves (Sr1) since the drivers have reported that they now work in extremely noisy conditions inside many Sr1s due to old age / worn out machinery: http://4rail.net/reference_finland_locos_sr1.php
The diesels are needed to replace the class Dv12, which is aging and some end every year to torch due to being in a poor shape: http://4rail.net/reference_finland_locos_diesel1.php#dv12

You know well the investment figures here, the politicians have influenced some recent investments here, which VR did not want to make. For the now well known results. But the track building still was VRs own decision, but the new sleeper cars (which will never earn the money invested to them) were not.


GPutz Wrote:
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> This is very unfortunate. In 2004 and 2005, when
> I was working in Finland, I cannot remember being
> more than 2 or 3 minutes off schedule on trains
> between Helsinki and Turku, and between Turku and
> Tampere. I rarely rode the Helsinki commuter
> trains. Did they perform better then? You
> mentioned that new electric and diesel locomotives
> and passenger cars are scheduled to arrive
> starting next year. That makes it seem like the
> investment in them was made just a year or two too
> late. Who controlled that investment, VR
> management or the government? Gerry

GPutz Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This is very unfortunate. In 2004 and 2005, when
> I was working in Finland, I cannot remember being
> more than 2 or 3 minutes off schedule on trains
...and my Finnish friends complained at that time, that trains are late very often. I was like "oh, really?"
Now I can say: really!

And the problem is not only in the top management, I think it went down to the level of an ordinary workers. It looks like conductors are quietly sabotaging ticket selling. I noticed several times that conductors didn't come at all or worked sooo slow.
It was correct mentioning about management whom workers trust.