Reference metadata describe statistical concepts and methodologies used for the collection and generation of data. They provide information on data quality and, since they are strongly content-oriented, assist users in interpreting the data. Reference metadata, unlike structural metadata, can be decoupled from the data.
Responsible for the statistics is Peter Ottosen, Tel. +45 3917 3025, e-mail: pot@dst.dk.
1.1. Contact organisation
Statistics Denmark
1.2. Contact organisation unit
Division of Short Term Statistics, Department of Business Statistics
1.3. Contact name
Confidential because of GDPR
1.4. Contact person function
Confidential because of GDPR
1.5. Contact mail address
Sejrøgade 11, 2100 Copenhagen
1.6. Contact email address
Confidential because of GDPR
1.7. Contact phone number
Confidential because of GDPR
1.8. Contact fax number
Confidential because of GDPR
2.1. Metadata last certified
2 June 2022
2.2. Metadata last posted
2 June 2022
2.3. Metadata last update
2 June 2022
Rail transport statistics are collected from the operators on the Danish rail network and from infrastructure managers. It contains information on passenger and goods transport on Danish rail network irrespective of the nationality of the operator, information on railway infrastructure and rolling vehicle stock, investments in infrastructure and rolling vehicles, and rail accidents. It covers number of passengers and weight of goods. Also it covers person/goods kilometers, investments in the railway and accidents.
3.1. Data description
Rail transport statistics contain information on
Passenger and goods transport by rail: the number of passenger and weight and type of goods
Railway infrastructure and rolling vehicle stock: the length of rails and network characteristics, e.g. interlocking or train stops, and number of locomotives and wagons
Investments in railway infrastructure and rolling vehicles: Investments in rail network and service buildings etc. and investments in locomotives and wagons
Rail Accidents
3.2. Classification system
Classifications specified in the EU legislation are used. Primarily it is the classification of the type of goods according to NST2007 and the classification on dangerous goods. Further grouping by type of transport, type of train, segments, type of wagon, regions, countries and type of incidents.
3.3. Coverage - sector
Rail transport in Denmark.
3.4. Statistical concepts and definitions
Centralised traffic control: Length of lines in kilometre with centralised traffic control. A system that controls railroad interlockings and traffic flows.
Country: Country of origin or destination for international transport.
Region: Regions by NUTS2-level. Region of origin or destination of national transports.
Crossings: Crossings where roads cross train tracks.
Electrified lines: Electrified lines.
Gross weight of goods: Gross weight of goods in ton excluding packing.
Intermodal transport unit: Intermodal transport unit (e.g. container unit) used for a given goods transport.
Investments: Investments in moving and fixed capital in mill. Danish kroner.
Load capacity in 1,000 tonnes: Load capacity in goods wagons in 1,000 tonnes.
Multiple-track lines: Lines with multiple parallel tracks.
Passenger kilometer: Passenger kilometer is a unit that measures the total distance travelled of all passengers.
Passengers: Number of passengers transported including non-fare paying passengers.
Railway lines: Railway lines is a single or multiple track route between two point. Railway lines are in the statistics subdivided primarily based on the infrastructure manager. The primary railway lines are subdivided based on location.
Seating: Available seating in passenger wagons.
Speed and train stop control: Lines with speed and train stop control.
Stations or halts: Places where a train can stop and load/unload goods or embark/disembark passengers, i.e. stations or halts.
Tonkilometer: A measure of the transport production. It is measured in tonkm as a combination of the weight of the goods and the distance travelled.
Train: Train is a locomotive or tractive vehicle combined with passenger or goods wagon. One or several coupled trainsets are considered a train. A tractive vehicle (locomotive) alone is not a train.
Trainset: A trainset is a indivisible block of railcar(s) and railcar trailer(s) or locomotives(s) and passenger railway vehicle(s).
Train kilometer: Train kilometer is the distance travelled by a train.
Type of goods: Categorisation of the type of goods.
Type of transport: Type of transport, national or international.
3.5. Statistical unit
The unit used in dissemination is the railway stretch.
3.6. Statistical population
Passenger and goods transport on Danish rail network
3.7. Reference area
Railways in Denmark.
3.8. Coverage - Time
Few of the time series starts in 1990. Then from 2006 and onwards more time series has been added due to demands from the EU-regulation.
3.9. Base period
Not relevant for this statistics.
Passenger transport in number of persons and in passenger-kilometer (number of passengers times performed distance, passenger-km)
Goods transport in tonnes and tonnes-kilometer (tonnes times performed km)
vehicle kilometer in vehicle-km (train times performed km)
Investments in DKK (Danish Kroner) in current and fixed prices
Quarter or calendar year.
6.1. Institutional Mandate - legal acts and other agreements
Data collection is authorised by the Law on Statistics Denmark, section 8, cf. order no. 610 of 30 May 2018.
Statistics on rail transport are compiled according to European Parliament and Council regulation 2018/643 of 18 April 2018 on Statistics on railway transport.
6.2. Institutional Mandate - data sharing
N.A.
7.1. Confidentiality - policy
Due to the low number of operators and the structure of the sector as well as the public interest in the data, no active confidentiality is applied to the statistics. In particular within the transport of passengers, data identifiable on the main operators are published.
The statistics follows the general policy for Data confidentiality by Statistics Denmark
8.1. Release calendar
The publication date appears in the release calendar. The date is confirmed in the weeks before.
8.2. Release calendar access
The Release Calender can be accessed on our English website: Release Calender.
8.3. Release policy - user access
Statistics are always published at 8:00 a.m. at the day announced in the release calendar. No one outside of Statistics Denmark can access the statistics before they are published.
Goods and passenger transport are compiled quarterly. Other parts of the statistics are compiled annually.
The statistics are published yearly in Nyt fra Danmarks Statistik (Statistical news) , and all data is available in the online database of Statistics Denmark, https://www.Statbank.dk.
Selected series are publish in Statistical Ten-Year Review.
BANE32: Train traffic on a work day by section of the line and unit
Transport equipment
BANE51: Railways' rolling stock 1st January by type of rolling stock
BANE52: Seats and load capacity in railway vehicles 1st January by type of railway vehicle and unit
BANE53: Investments in railways' rolling stock by type of investment and unit
Traffic accidents involving trains
BANE91: Fatalities and injuries in railway traffic accidents by railway system, category of person and casualty
BANE92: Fatalities and injuries in railway traffic accidents by railway system, type of accident and casualty
10.4. Dissemination format - microdata access
Researchers and other analytics from authorized research institutes, may apply for access to the statistics micro-data with Danish Statistics' research program Data for research. Only Danish research environments are granted authorization. Foreign researchers can, however, get access to micro-data through an affiliation to a Danish authorized environment. . A similar research program is available for Danish state departments, agencies and directorates.
10.5. Dissemination format - other
Data on passenger and goods transport are provided to and published in Eurostat's database.
Results from the quality evaluation of products and selected processes are available in detail for each statistics and in summary reports for the Working Group on Quality.
Statistics Denmark follows the recommendations on organisation and management of quality given in the Code of Practice for European Statistics (CoP) and the implementation guidelines given in the Quality Assurance Framework of the European Statistical System (QAF). A Working Group on Quality and a central quality assurance function have been established to continuously carry through control of products and processes.
11.1. Quality assurance
Statistics Denmark follows the principles in the Code of Practice for European Statistics (CoP) and uses the Quality Assurance Framework of the European Statistical System (QAF) for the implementation of the principles. This involves continuous decentralized and central control of products and processes based on documentation following international standards. The central quality assurance function reports to the Working Group on Quality. Reports include suggestions for improvement that are assessed, decided and subsequently implemented.
11.2. Quality management - assessment
The quality is assessed to be high since all operators are included in the survey with a response rate of 100 percent. There is no need for imputation or enumeration.
Information on investments is assessed to be of very quality as the information originates from the financial statements of the enterprises.
Transport of goods are assessed to be of high quality. No major revisions are made and there is no bias in the revisions made.
Passenger transport are of good quality. In this area higher uncertainty exists since data are based on the passenger models of the operators that is based on ticket sale, sale of season ticket, ticket inspections and passenger counts. The models estimates all types of passengers including passengers without tickets. Data are often revised. No bias seems to be present.
The statistics are used widely by e.g. news media, ministries and consultancies, and it is the impression that the statistics is of relevance to the users.
The statistics are primarily used by EU for policy work but also other with interest on the subject uses it. This includes government bodies.
12.1. Relevance - User Needs
Primary users are the European Commission and Danish ministries that use the data for policy making and assessment; the industry associations and enterprises that use data to analyse the development of the sector and research institutes that use the statistics for analyses and research into the transport sector.
12.2. Relevance - User Satisfaction
Contact to users is done through a committee with representatives from major institutional users of transport statistics.
12.3. Completeness
The statistics on rail transport covers all activity. The conditions for simplified reporting are not fulfilled by any operator in Denmark.
Uncertainty is estimated to be relative small since data collection covers all enterprises operating trains on the Danish rail network.
Passenger transport have larger uncertainty than goods transport since the statistics for passenger transport are based on the companies' models of total number of passengers.
Only minor revisions are done to the first preliminary publication.
13.1. Accuracy - overall
It is the assessment that the precision of the main indicators of the statistics - transport of passengers and goods - are within a 5 per cent band. But it is not possible to measure.
The main uncertainty is within passenger transport that is based on the passenger models of the operators in which besides sold tickets, passengers with season tickets and passengers without tickets are estimated as well.
There is no reason to believe that there is systematic bias in the statistics since all operators are reporting.
13.2. Sampling error
Not relevant to this statistics.
13.3. Non-sampling error
No errors occur due to errors in coverage, measure, missing data, etc.
All operators are reporting quarterly and there are no reason to believe that there should be any systematic errors in their reporting.
The statistics are published 73-74 days after the reference period.
The statistics are always published at the pre-announced time.
14.1. Timeliness
Timeliness for quarterly dissemination is around 75 days and for yearly dissemination is around 8 months.
14.2. Punctuality
Punctuality is high. The statistics have been published at the pre-announced time from data for 1st quarter 2013 and forward.
Comparable time series for all EU-member states and EFTA-member states are published by Eurostat.
There is no significant breaks in the existing time series. The time series for personkilometres for the Metro has a minor break between 2016 and 2017 due to changes in methodology.
15.1. Comparability - geographical
The statistics are published in the same way by countries within EU, EFTA and EU-candidate countries and Eurostat publishes comparable figures.
15.2. Comparability - over time
The statistics are comparable over time.
The Metro opened the 19th of October 2002. By the end of the third quarter of 2019 opened the M3 line.
First part of the Light Rail in Aarhus opened the 21st of December 2017 and fully finished 30th of April 2019.
Nordjyske Jernbaner started operating all trains in Northern part of Jutland in 2017. This means that there is a move from "Network managed by Banestyrelsen" to "Other Railway Networks".
The time series for personkilometres for the Metro has a minor break between 2016 and 2017 due to a change in the methodology for calculating journey lengths used for the calculation of personkilometres.
15.3. Coherence - cross domain
No related statistics exist.
15.4. Coherence - internal
Not relevant to this statistics.
The administrative burden on reporting enterprises are very low.
17.1. Data revision - policy
Statistics Denmark revises published figures in accordance with the Revision Policy for Statistics Denmark. The common procedures and principles of the Revision Policy are for some statistics supplemented by a specific revision practice.
17.2. Data revision - practice
The statistics are revised for 4-8 quarters in connection to dissemination of new quarters. The revisions are due to revised figures from the operator.
In connection to major revisions of the passenger models, major revisions in data older than two years can occur occasional.
Rail Statistics are collected through the online data collection portal, http://www.Virk.dk quarterly from all rail operators with transport on the Danish rail network including private railways and light rail lines. Data are validated with regard to internal consistency in the report and the development in the time series on both micro (enterprise) and macro (aggregated statistics) level. No imputation, enumeration or seasonally adjustment are done.
18.1. Source data
The data source for passenger and goods data is questionnaires to train operators including private railways and light rail lines.
The data source for investments is partly the train operators and partly infrastructure managers.
Other data sources are the Danish Transport and Construction Agency.
18.2. Frequency of data collection
Passenger and goods data are collected quarterly. Other data are collected annually.
18.3. Data collection
Data from train operators and infrastructure managers are collected through a so-called upload solution via the public data collection portal, http://www.Virk.dk.
Data from other public authorities are in some cases collected through e-mails.
18.4. Data validation
The purpose of data validation is to ensure a correct statistics.
In each report, validation consists of
Internal consistency check: Data are checked for internal consistency, i.e. coherence between different related pieces of information within the questionnaire, e.g. with reported number of passengers, passenger-km should also be filled.
Development: The development in the times series for each data provider in particular from previous quarter and from the same quarter last year are checked in order to detect erroneous reports or get explanations on unusual events.
This can lead to contact of the reporting company for getting more correct data.
The compiled statistics are checked for Development: The development in the time series in particular from previous quarter and from the same quarter last year are checked in order to detect erroneous reports or get explanations on unusual events.
18.5. Data compilation
No additional data compilation are done besides data validation. There is no need for imputation or enumeration since data collection covers the full population and is complete.
18.6. Adjustment
No seasonally adjustments are made. The data are evaluated regularly to examine if stable seasonality exists and seasonally adjustment is possible.
Additional information can be found at the statistic's subject page.
Rail transport statistics contain information on
Passenger and goods transport by rail: the number of passenger and weight and type of goods
Railway infrastructure and rolling vehicle stock: the length of rails and network characteristics, e.g. interlocking or train stops, and number of locomotives and wagons
Investments in railway infrastructure and rolling vehicles: Investments in rail network and service buildings etc. and investments in locomotives and wagons
Rail Accidents
2 June 2022
Centralised traffic control: Length of lines in kilometre with centralised traffic control. A system that controls railroad interlockings and traffic flows.
Country: Country of origin or destination for international transport.
Region: Regions by NUTS2-level. Region of origin or destination of national transports.
Crossings: Crossings where roads cross train tracks.
Electrified lines: Electrified lines.
Gross weight of goods: Gross weight of goods in ton excluding packing.
Intermodal transport unit: Intermodal transport unit (e.g. container unit) used for a given goods transport.
Investments: Investments in moving and fixed capital in mill. Danish kroner.
Load capacity in 1,000 tonnes: Load capacity in goods wagons in 1,000 tonnes.
Multiple-track lines: Lines with multiple parallel tracks.
Passenger kilometer: Passenger kilometer is a unit that measures the total distance travelled of all passengers.
Passengers: Number of passengers transported including non-fare paying passengers.
Railway lines: Railway lines is a single or multiple track route between two point. Railway lines are in the statistics subdivided primarily based on the infrastructure manager. The primary railway lines are subdivided based on location.
Seating: Available seating in passenger wagons.
Speed and train stop control: Lines with speed and train stop control.
Stations or halts: Places where a train can stop and load/unload goods or embark/disembark passengers, i.e. stations or halts.
Tonkilometer: A measure of the transport production. It is measured in tonkm as a combination of the weight of the goods and the distance travelled.
Train: Train is a locomotive or tractive vehicle combined with passenger or goods wagon. One or several coupled trainsets are considered a train. A tractive vehicle (locomotive) alone is not a train.
Trainset: A trainset is a indivisible block of railcar(s) and railcar trailer(s) or locomotives(s) and passenger railway vehicle(s).
Train kilometer: Train kilometer is the distance travelled by a train.
Type of goods: Categorisation of the type of goods.
Type of transport: Type of transport, national or international.
The unit used in dissemination is the railway stretch.
Passenger and goods transport on Danish rail network
Railways in Denmark.
Quarter or calendar year.
It is the assessment that the precision of the main indicators of the statistics - transport of passengers and goods - are within a 5 per cent band. But it is not possible to measure.
The main uncertainty is within passenger transport that is based on the passenger models of the operators in which besides sold tickets, passengers with season tickets and passengers without tickets are estimated as well.
There is no reason to believe that there is systematic bias in the statistics since all operators are reporting.
Passenger transport in number of persons and in passenger-kilometer (number of passengers times performed distance, passenger-km)
Goods transport in tonnes and tonnes-kilometer (tonnes times performed km)
vehicle kilometer in vehicle-km (train times performed km)
Investments in DKK (Danish Kroner) in current and fixed prices
No additional data compilation are done besides data validation. There is no need for imputation or enumeration since data collection covers the full population and is complete.
The data source for passenger and goods data is questionnaires to train operators including private railways and light rail lines.
The data source for investments is partly the train operators and partly infrastructure managers.
Other data sources are the Danish Transport and Construction Agency.
Goods and passenger transport are compiled quarterly. Other parts of the statistics are compiled annually.
Timeliness for quarterly dissemination is around 75 days and for yearly dissemination is around 8 months.
The statistics are published in the same way by countries within EU, EFTA and EU-candidate countries and Eurostat publishes comparable figures.
The statistics are comparable over time.
The Metro opened the 19th of October 2002. By the end of the third quarter of 2019 opened the M3 line.
First part of the Light Rail in Aarhus opened the 21st of December 2017 and fully finished 30th of April 2019.
Nordjyske Jernbaner started operating all trains in Northern part of Jutland in 2017. This means that there is a move from "Network managed by Banestyrelsen" to "Other Railway Networks".
The time series for personkilometres for the Metro has a minor break between 2016 and 2017 due to a change in the methodology for calculating journey lengths used for the calculation of personkilometres.
