Rail transport

National transport

Transport between two places (a place of loading/embarkation and a place of unloading/disembarkation) located in Norway.

International transport

Transport between a place (of loading/embarkation or unloading/disembarkation) in Norway and a place (of loading/embarkation or unloading/disembarkation) in another country.

TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit)

A standard unit based on an ISO container of 20 feet length (6,10 m), used as a statistical measure of traffic flows or capacities.

Tonnage carried

Gross weight of goods including packaging and tare weight of vehicles, containers and other transport units.

Freight transport performance (tonne kilometres)

A measure of freight transport, defined as the work being performed when a means of transport carries a certain amount of goods over a certain distance.

Passengers

Any person, excluding members of the train crew, who makes a trip by rail.

Passenger transport performance (passenger kilometres)

A measure of passenger transport, defined as the work being performed when a means of transport carries a certain number of persons a certain distance, that is the number of passengers multiplied with the length of the journey.

NST/R and ADR (see 4.1.)

Name: Rail transport
Topic: Transport and tourism

Division for Energy, Environmental and Transport Statistics

Nuts II-level.

Quarterly and annually.

Transmission of data to Eurostat on quarterly and annual basis. Some data are reported to UNECE and OECD.

Collected and revised data are stored securely by Statistics Norway in compliance with applicable legislation on data processing.

Statistics Norway can grant access to the source data (de-identified or anonymised microdata) on which the statistics are based, for researchers and public authorities for the purposes of preparing statistical results and analyses. Access can be granted upon application and subject to conditions. Refer to the details about this at Access to data from Statistics Norway.

The EU is working towards a more comprehensive use of intermodal transport as a means to reduce transport by lorry to the 1998-level. Consequently, there is a need to establish adequate statistics for all modes of transport, including transport by rail.

In addition to being published separately, the statistics are used in the calculations of the domestic transport performances. The statistics are used by several users, including research institutes and governmental bodies.

No external users have access to statistics before they are released at 8 a.m. on ssb.no after at least three months’ advance notice in the release calendar. This is one of the most important principles in Statistics Norway for ensuring the equal treatment of users.

The rail statistics are used as input data in several statistics produced in Statistics Norway, for instance in the calculation of the quarterly national accounts and the annual calculation of the transport performance by mode of transport.

The statistics are developed, produced and disseminated pursuant to Act no. 32 of 21 June 2019 relating to official statistics and Statistics Norway (the Statistics Act).

Regulation (EU) 2018/643 of the European Parliament and of the Council.

Council Regulation (EC) no. 91/2003.

Commission Regulation (EC) no. 1192/2003.

The statistics include all approved rail operators, i.e. all commercial transport by rail including possible private own enterprises. The suburban railways and urban tramways are not included.

Questionnaires completed by all operators.

Full count.

Editing is defined here as checking, examining and amending data.

There are quite few operators. All editing is therefore carried out manually.

The survey is based on a full count. Partial withdrawals are very rare. A few variables must be estimated by Statistics Norway. However, passenger figures by nationality have to be estimated based on other sources.

Employees of Statistics Norway have a duty of confidentiality.

Statistics Norway does not publish figures if there is a risk of the respondent’s contribution being identified. This means that, as a general rule, figures are not published if fewer than three units form the basis of a cell in a table or if the contribution of one or two respondents constitutes a very large part of the cell total.

Statistics Norway can make exceptions to the general rule if deemed necessary to meet the requirements of the EEA agreement, if the respondent is a public authority, if the respondent has consented to this, or when the information disclosed is openly accessible to the public.

More information can be found on Statistics Norway’s website under Methods in official statistics, in the ‘Confidentiality’ section.

The principal rule of the Statistics Act is that information shall under no circumstances be published in such a way that it may be traced back to the supplier of any data or to any other identifiable individual. In agreement with the rail operators, an exception has been made to this rule.

Few alterations have been done in the EC-Regulation. The comparability in the time series from 2003 is fairly good.

The train operator on the Gjøvik line adopted a new calculation model for the number of passengers and passenger kilometres in 2019. The figures for the Gjøvik line as of 2019 are therefore not comparable with previous years.

The questionnaires are reviewed thoroughly, and errors are rectified during this process.

A revision is a planned change to figures that have already been published, for example when releasing final figures as a follow-up to published preliminary figures. See also Statistics Norway’s principles for revisions.

Transport of timber were earlier inaccurately reported as wooden products, correct category is forestry products. Other misplaced commodities are transport of chalk, which was categorized as metal ores when correct category is non metallic mineral products, and transport of grouped goods which had been categorized as unidentifiable goods. These categories were corrected on 26 January 2022.