Didn’t know when the bus would come

On Good Friday, Svein Erik Osmark Kristiansen (46) was going on a day trip from Narvik to the cabin on Bjørnfjell.

He had booked a ticket both ways well in advance, but on the train journey up he received a text message saying that the return train had been cancelled.

– I contacted the conductor on the train and asked how I was going to get back down from the mountain. She said there was going to be a bus at 17.55, but where that bus was going to leave from – she couldn’t answer that.

In winter, there is no road to the train station at Bjørnfjell, says Kristiansen.

This is the message he received about the cancellation:

He says he had to spend large parts of the day trying to find out where the bus was going to leave from. He was told by Swedish Vy Tåg’s customer service that the bus would leave from the toll station – a few kilometers from the train station.

The newspaper Forward mentioned the matter first.

Kristiansen trooped up to the customs station and waited for the bus. But the bus did not show up:

– No bus came.

After calling customer service again, he was told that no bus was coming. Instead, customer service should order a taxi for him.

– But they said the taxi would come to the train station – which it is not physically possible to get to by car.

Kristiansen asked if he could get the contact information for the taxi company or the driver, so that he could coordinate where he should be picked up:

– It was cold, so maybe I could find a place to warm myself.

However, Vy Tåg could not share the contact information for the taxi company, but he could, so Kristiansen waited at the toll station.

Half an hour passed:

– I called again, and they said the taxi was on its way.

Another half hour passed:

– I called again, and then I was told that they had not got hold of any taxi. But, there was supposed to be a bus.

After Kristiansen had spent over two hours at the toll station, he had a bus that was going to Narvik stopped.

– I got to sit on it, but whether it was a bus instead of a train – I don’t know. The bus had no markings.

– You have to be able to trust that there is a train or bus

At the time it was 10–15 degrees below zero, Kristiansen estimates.

– I was wearing good clothes, but after two hours it got chilly. So I had to jog a bit. I couldn’t have waited much longer before I had to go back to the cabin, he says.

– If I only had something to deal with, it would have been much easier. This would not have happened if there was a family with small children standing there.

The cabin to Kristiansen is only a 15-minute ski ride from Tollstasjonen. If he had been given a time to deal with, he could stay there.

– This is fundamentally important. Such stupid answers from the customer service and so little willingness to find out what is going on. You must be able to trust that there is a train or bus.

Vy Tåg: – Here we have to go in and investigate

Traffic manager at Vy Tåg AB, Roger Norman, says it is difficult to give a concrete answer to Kristiansen’s situation, but that such situations are never desirable:

– It shouldn’t be like that, he should get the money back for that trip.

Norman says there has been a lot of trouble on the train route. After a train derailed in December, only limited passenger traffic has run on the line, according to Norman.

– But we have established a bus for trains on that route, which will run, he says.

Norman encourages Kristiansen to submit a complaint, so that Vy tåg can investigate what has gone wrong with Kristiansen’s information.

– Of course, we take our travelers seriously. Here we have to go in and investigate what went wrong.