Norwegian airport owner and operator Avinor arrives at Routes Europe in joyous mood after hitting a key sustainability target five years ahead of its original schedule. The country’s largest air Gateway, Oslo Airport, revealed this week that the public transportation share of ground transport to the facility had reached nearly 70 per cent in 2015, the largest share for any major airport in Europe.

In fact there are only three airports across the globe that can boast a higher rate of public transportation usage for ground Access and all three of them are in Japan, which has a national public transportation system regarded as one of the best in the world.

"Avinor is a catalyst for improved public transport and works diligently to improve the public transport share through a number of targeted measures that make it more attractive to take public transportation to and from Oslo Airport,” said Øyvind Hasaas, managing director, Oslo Airport.

In 2008, Avinor adopted a goal of reaching the 70 percent public transportation share in the ground transport service to Oslo Airport in 2020, but has now achieved this ahead of schedule. It remains on-track to to achieve a 75 percent public transportation share by 2030.

The growth in the share of public transportation has largely come about as a result of the fact that fewer people are driving their own cars to and from the airport. The percentage of car usage fell from 27 to 22 percent from 2014 to 2015. Buses have also experienced some decline. Taxis, which account for 4 percent, are not considered public transportation.

The most striking change in recent years is the increased market share for NSB (Norwegian State Railway). In 2007, NSB had a market share of 7 percent, it was 15 percent in 2014, and as much as 21 percent in 2015. The boost is mainly due to more frequent trains and lower prices. The airport express train (Flytoget) has held stable at 35-38 percent, but has lost some ground in the competition with NSB in the last two years.

The data is based upon two different surveys: the Airport Service Quality survey (ASQ) is a global questionnaire survey conducted under the auspices of Airport Council International (ACI) and Avinor's own travel habits survey (RVU) which comprises around 50,000 interviews per year at Oslo Airport.

Both ASQ and RVU are selected sample surveys, and as such they yield somewhat differing public transport shares. In 2015, RVU showed a public transport share of 71.4 percent, while ASQ showed 69.1 percent. The increase in public transport share in 2015 was 4.6 percentage points in RVU and 1.5 percentage points in ASQ.

Avinor is confident it will be able to continue to grow public transportation access to oslo Airport but warns that future advances are mainly outside of its own control and responsibility. These include making sufficient track and station capacity for trains, a public transport lane on E6, new services in areas with low public transportation rates, better cooperation between airlines and public transport companies, as well as stronger concentration of residential and job growth in Akershus County where Oslo Airport is located.