- We have had challenges around punctuality.
It can be said that lack of punctuality is primarily driven by three different factors, says Mats Berlin, head of department at the Swedish Transport Administration.
He highlights the railway facility, vehicle faults and external factors as the main causes.
- Sweden's railway network is quite worn.
This spring we have had two rather extreme events.
On the one hand, we have had major disruptions on both the western and southern main line, which are important routes in Sweden.
We discovered cracks in tracks that needed to be replaced.
But we have also had historically a lot of track running, ie unauthorized people in the track area, Berlin explains.
Many canceled trains
The Swedish Transport Administration's statistics show that the number of passenger trains canceled less than one day before departure has been almost as many in the first half of this year as during the same period for both 2020 and 2021 together.
A total of 17,416 trains were canceled from the first of January to the last of June.
The common goal of the train industry is 95 percent punctuality.
So far this year, 89.8 percent of the trains have arrived on time.
Punctuality has deteriorated and the canceled trains have increased. Are you doing the right things?
- I would probably say that we do.
Staff shortage
Mats Berlin highlights problems with finding staff as an additional reason for the poor result.
- After the pandemic, there has been a large increase in mobility among many of the roles that work with railways.
This can apply to train drivers, traffic managers and traffic planners. And these are fairly advanced roles that take a long time to train and there are great demands on safety.
Can you tell when it will be better, much better than it has been now?
- It's hard to say, of course.
If we are a little lucky and there are no disturbances that are not possible to predict, I hope that in the autumn we will be able to show a better punctuality than we did in the spring.