Rail transport

National transport: Transport by rail between two places in the reporting country; one place for loading/embarking and one place for unloading/disembarking.

International transport: Transport by rail between a place (for loading/embarking or unloading disembarking) in the reporting country and a place (for loading/embarking or unloading/ disembarking) in another country.

Transit: Transport through the reporting country between two places located outside the reporting country.

TEU - Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit:* A standard unit based on an ISO container 20 feet long (6,10 meters).

Weight: Gross weight including packaging and the tare weight.

Tonne-kilometre:. The transport of one tonne over one kilometre (actually run).

Type of commodity: Based on the NST/R 2007 nomenclature.

Dangerous goods: Based on the ADR classification.

Passenger: The number of trips.

Passenger-kilometres: In principle the sum total of the kilometres travelled by each passenger.

NST/R and ADR (see 4.1.)

Nuts II-level every fifth year.

Quarterly and annually.

Transmission of data to Eurostat.

Microdata are stored in Oracle databases, and production data are stored as SAS files. Historical data are stored as ASCII files on UNIX.

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.

The statistics will in addition to being published separately, be used in the calculations of the domestic transport performances. The statistics are used by several users, including research institutes and government authorities.

No external users have access to the statistics and analyses before they are published and accessible simultaneously for all users on ssb.no at 8 am. Prior to this, a minimum of three months' advance notice is given inthe Statistics Release Calendar. This is one of Statistics Norway’s key principles for ensuring that all users are treated equally.

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.

§ 2-2 and 2-3 of the Statistics Act.

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.

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. Few variables must be estimated by Statistics Norway. However, passenger figures by nationality have to be estimated based on other sources.

No

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.

The statistics are fairly new and few alterations have been done in the EC-Regulation. In addition, very few and small operators have entered the market since 2003. The comparability in the time series from 2003 is thus good.

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

Not relevant