(cont.) Response to interpellation 2024/25:549 on the division of the Swedish Transport Administration

Kadir Kasirga (S)

Madam Speaker! Thank you to Adrian Magnusson for an important interpellation, and thank you to the Minister for the answer!

The Minister for Infrastructure says in his response that the basic arguments behind merging Banverket and Vägverket into Trafikverket are still relevant. I think, however, that the Minister is completely dodging the real question: Why does it not work in practice, in reality? Why is the criticism growing, not only from unions and employees but also from the industry, external reviewers, and regional actors?

The trade union Seko's report shows in black and white how railway maintenance has been eroded since deregulation. Sweden has moved from having a robust public system for maintenance to having one of Europe's most privatized. The result is that costs have skyrocketed, that competence has disappeared from the authority, and that maintenance needs are increasing. The money goes to short-term patching, not to long-term sustainability. When Trafikverket does not have its own competence, everything must be outsourced, including analysis and follow-up. This means that as a client, one does not have control. When the crisis comes, as in this past winter when the railway stood still, the authority stood helpless.

Madam Speaker! The Minister also says that Trafikverket is now concentrating its efforts, but I want to remind that this government, when it began its mandate period, started by reducing the appropriations for operation and maintenance by 750 million kronor. No evaluation is being conducted on whether today's model works or not. In that case, it is still the government's responsibility to act, and that was actually what the interpellation was about.

The trade union Seko writes in its report that they are not proposing that we should return to the 80s. That is not what we are talking about. We propose that Trafikverket, like other European countries, regains its own capacity and its own competence, especially when it comes to execution. This is very important. That is not the case today. Today, Trafikverket is a pure ordering organization that lacks competence when it comes to the execution of railway maintenance or road maintenance.

Madam Speaker! The question is simple: Why is the government not investigating this? Why is the door being closed immediately? Why can one not look at how other European countries have handled this?

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Linus Lakso (MP)

Madam Speaker! Thank you for the answer, Andreas Carlson, and thank you to Member Adrian Magnusson for an important interpellation!

We have just established that we have had the worst punctuality on the Swedish railway in 14 years. Not since the Alliance last ruled, in 2011, have more people had to stand and wait on the platform for delayed trains and trains that never arrive. No fewer than 13 times in the last 15 years has Trafikverket received stinging criticism, not least from the National Audit Office, which in recurring reports has pointed out deficiencies.

The purpose of merging Banverket and Vägverket and a number of other agencies may have been good. But after 15 years, we must conclude that it was a fatal mistake and adjust according to reality. Employees have even contacted me and complained – they want to do a good job and get the Swedish railway in order, but they are hindered by a dysfunctional agency structure.

Some of the criticism has consisted of that a lot of competence was lost on the railway side when these two agencies were merged, and that the railway differs slightly from other modes of transport in that it is a system that needs to hold together. One needs to have an overall control of the system for it to function.

Trafikverket has also consistently and notoriously underestimated the increased demand for train travel in Sweden. They themselves admit that the lack of capacity, which is a consequence of not having seen that the demand for trains would increase and has increased significantly, is a partial explanation for all the delayed trains we see. Another problem is that Trafikverket is unable to remedy the lack of maintenance on the Swedish railway.

Both in the election campaign and when the infrastructure bill was presented, Andreas Carlson himself made a great deal out of wanting to reclaim the deferred maintenance. It is an ambition that we share. But what is the result? Until 2037, at best, one will succeed in reclaiming 10–15 percent of the deferred maintenance. In other words, Andreas Carlson's plan is to push 90 percent of the deferred maintenance ahead of itself. The reason is quite simply that Trafikverket is such an inefficient organization today that one cannot manage to work more and faster to catch up on the deferred maintenance.

Madam Speaker! Despite all these shortcomings, Andreas Carlson is not even prepared to investigate the question of an optimal authority structure to get the railway in order. I find that a bit strange.

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Statsrådet Andreas Carlson (KD)

Madam Speaker! I would like to thank you for the commitment in this discussion.

A choice must be made. Do we now want to initiate one of Förvaltningssverige's perhaps largest organizational investigations, or do we need to ensure that more gears are replaced already this year? Do we need to ensure that we strengthen the accessibility and robustness already this year, or do we want to push this into an investigation that will take several years? That is my question back to the members.

I would like to say that the answer I have given is based on the fact that the needs we have are much more urgent than starting a comprehensive investigation into how the organization Trafikverket should be divided. The government's focus is to strengthen Trafikverket's procurement competence and operational capacity regarding railway maintenance, road maintenance, and investments in new infrastructure already this year.

This year, 1,700 maintenance works will be carried out on the Swedish railway. It is a record amount. Last year, a record number of trains ran on a worn-out infrastructure. Last year also saw a record, all-time-high, in track failures on the railway, which affects punctuality by approximately 1.5 percentage points.

There are, therefore, many different explanations for why the situation is as it is. But if we bring up the National Audit Office's criticism, as Linus Lakso does, I also think we should look at what it is the National Audit Office has criticized.

The National Audit Office has criticized the previous government – and also previous governments – and has focused on the previous national plan. The criticism concerned poor governance and political priorities. And the headline for the review of the national plan 2022–2033, i.e., the currently applicable national plan, contains the words "promises more than it can deliver".

The big problem is, therefore, the management and the priorities. Maintenance has not been prioritized. Decade after decade, necessary maintenance has been postponed to such an extent that on the railway side there is now a maintenance debt of 91 billion kronor and on the road side approximately 35 billion kronor. Now we are maximizing the budget to as much as Trafikverket assesses can be converted in practice regarding both road maintenance and railway maintenance.

I found it very interesting to look at the Socialdemokraternas follow-up motion on the infrastructure bill. They want to reduce the allocation for road maintenance by 45 billion kronor. This is what we should discuss: what priorities are being made and how the organization Trafikverket is strengthened.

We have announced that we will prepare various proposals on models for alternative financing and implementation with an OPS investigator to obtain alternative forms and to obtain objects of comparison. It will challenge Trafikverket.

We are also strengthening the work on cost control. Adrian Magnusson pointed out that costs are spiraling. This is also a result of political priorities. Under the previous government, Trafikverket was allowed to finance administrative costs, i.e., the agency's staff, with appropriations that were bound by the Swedish Riksdag to maintenance and new investments in a scope – bear with me – that corresponds to 59 billion kronor. We are now adjusting this upwards to achieve better cost control, budget discipline, and efficiency.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Adrian Magnusson (S)

Madam Speaker! Thanks to Linus Lakso and Kadir Kasirga, who also participate in this debate and point out the shortcomings in Trafikverket's organizational structure!

The Minister spoke in both his first and his last contribution about there being great coordination gains with Trafikverket. He said that when everything concerning road and railway is gathered within one agency, there are great coordination gains. At the same time, the Minister replied that we now have an agency that can handle much of the planning work for the development of the transport system in Sweden. He also used the phrasing that the agency can capture the different significance of the four modes of transport and not set them against each other. The answers are very vague, and it is precisely because Trafikverket is not fulfilling its mandate. It is too large an agency.

A completely impossible task has been given to Trafikverket, and it shows. The Minister himself says that a record number of trains are running on Swedish railways. We therefore have an agency that is supposed to handle all state road maintenance, all state new construction of roads, and all state maintenance and construction of railways. At the same time, we have a situation where traffic is hitting records. Not even in the 1850s did one have only one agency responsible for all of this. But now it is suddenly supposed to work, when we have record amounts of trains and record amounts of traffic on Swedish roads and railways. It says for itself that it is not possible and that Trafikverket is failing in its mission because they have been given an impossible task. This is no new criticism.

The Minister also tried to imply that this arose during the Löfven government or after the Andersson government resigned. But already in the beginning of 2015, that is when the Reinfeldt government had just resigned, stinging criticism emerged against Trafikverket. They were unable to keep track of the costs for railway maintenance and had no control over the railway infrastructure. Even then, perhaps one should have considered whether the agency was too large. My own party perhaps would have been a bit more critical earlier.

We see, and have seen for a long time, that Trafikverket is an excessively large agency that is not fulfilling its mission. That is at least my opinion. Kadir Kasirga was also pointing out that the criticism does not only come from Social Democrats who want to score political points against the Minister for Infrastructure. It also comes from the industry. It comes from people who work with these issues. Representatives for train companies say things such as that Trafikverket is a sinking ship. It is therefore not low-key criticism against Trafikverket, but rather harsh and stinging criticism from the actors who have the most to do with Trafikverket.

To further demonstrate how large Trafikverket is and thus how impossibly busy it is, I did a small exercise. I compared the appropriation letters for the Swedish Police Authority, which is the largest authority in terms of the number of employees, and Trafikverket. The Police's appropriation letter is 16 pages. Trafikverket's is 28 pages. It is almost twice as long, and it shows that the authority has a mandate that it cannot fulfill. It is because the governance from the government is too poor.

I understand that it hurts to phase out a project that was initiated by the Reinfeldt government 15 years ago, and especially to say it on the day the agency turns 15, as we noted an hour ago. But we must be able to look soberly at these types of issues. We must be able to see when an agency that has such an important mandate as Trafikverket, namely to manage the country's entire infrastructure, has been given a task that exceeds the agency's capacity.

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Kadir Kasirga (S)

Madam Speaker! Thank you to Minister Andreas Carlson for the answer!

The Minister spoke about coordination, a holistic view, and the benefits of coordination. But the question remains: What does it help when Trafikverket can hardly coordinate a winter effort? We have witnessed that, just as staff alert about lack of safety, that railway maintenance is failing, and that passengers across the country have their daily lives ruined due to cancelled trains. There is no competence within the state agency responsible for these issues to carry this out. Trafikverket is a pure commissioning organization.

Madam Speaker! We Social Democrats say that the state must not stand idly by. In this case, it concerns Trafikverket. Trafikverket must have muscles. Sweden needs a transport authority with its own competence, preparedness, and control. Therefore, we believe that railway maintenance should be reintroduced under its own management. The Government should at least dare to investigate it. It is not just about rails and bolts. It is also about the trust that society functions and that the trains run when they are supposed to. It is time to act before even more people are left standing on our platforms.

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Linus Lakso (MP)

Madam Speaker! Andreas Carlson said that we need to prioritize things that have an effect here and now. But in the next breath, the Minister said that the government is maximizing what Trafikverket can build up. The result of that is that we push 90 percent of the maintenance debt ahead of us until 2037. Does the Minister not see the problem? How are we ever going to be able to catch up with the maintenance debt if we do not have an agency that can work faster than that? It seems very strange to me.

I do not think it is sufficient to contrast the present with actually looking at how one can streamline things moving forward. The least one can do is to investigate how one can organize this better while, of course, doing what one can to improve the punctuality of the Swedish railway within the system we have today. Here, one needs to be able to think both and. I simply do not buy Andreas Carlson's excuse.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Statsrådet Andreas Carlson (KD)

Madam Speaker! It is not about making excuses. I believe that some objectivity is needed in a debate in the Swedish Riksdag. It is not the fault of the authority Trafikverket that maintenance has consistently and for decades been deprioritized by political parties and governments of different colors.

When one is to turn the ship around, the first step, which the government is now taking, is to invest as much as is needed to reach the level for the need for basic maintenance. This has not been reached previously. Approximately 15 billion is spent per year just to maintain functionality. The reason why the maintenance debt on the railway side grew by nearly 40 billion just from the orientation basis from the previous government to the orientation basis from this government, i.e., in four years, is that the goal of even reaching the level required to maintain the railway's function has been consistently deprioritized.

Now we are turning the curve and starting to amortize the maintenance debt. Are we satisfied with that? No, we must do more. We must expand Trafikverket's capacity.

Here, Kadir Kasirga and Adrian Magnusson illustrate the complexity. Their entry into the debate differs completely, Madam Speaker. We have two Social Democratic members in the chamber. One wants to divide and break up Trafikverket, and the other speaks of increasing Trafikverket's competence, expanding, and making it larger.

Now we are streamlining the agency, strengthening Trafikverket's operational capacity and client competence, taking on more of the maintenance, and strengthening the fleet of machinery. The agency has conducted a review itself, and evaluations are already underway internally. It has been seen that it is possible to make efficiencies in its own administration and instead put the money toward infrastructure. This corresponds to 300 million kronor per year, which is not small change. A lot of maintenance can be achieved with those funds.

This is being done step by step, and it is being done while we are speaking here today. During this year, a record amount of maintenance work will be carried out. I therefore appeal to the members that we can have these discussions, which I consider important, on a factual level and against the background of what is actually being done already as we tighten the governance of Trafikverket.

We are streamlining the economy. We ensure that the card cannot be used for professional costs for administrative costs so that there is no unclear steering in that part. We release an additional 59 billion kronor for maintenance and new investments in infrastructure, but above all, cost control and budget discipline are strengthened. Furthermore, we are actively working with cost control in the construction start decisions. We intend to introduce a risk reserve in the national plan.

All these steps are taken so that Trafikverket functions better, so that it is not just about more money for infrastructure but that we also get more infrastructure for the money.

Please feel free to speak about reorganizations and investigations, but also look at what is already being done and at the various cleanup efforts we are now undertaking. I do not mean that this remains solely from the previous government, but it also remains from previous governments over a long period. I have perceived a very large consensus to strengthen the function of Swedish infrastructure and Trafikverket's capacity. We are now delivering on what many have said for a very long time that they have wanted to see. However, it has been neglected. Now we are paving the way for an infrastructure that one can rely on.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Adrian Magnusson (S)

Madam Speaker! We can agree that this is not Trafikverket's fault from the beginning. Already when Trafikverket was formed in 2010, the then Finance Minister Anders Borg was very clear that one of the problems that the formation of Trafikverket was to address was that too much money was being spent on railways and too little on roads. Now it was to be changed, and the money was to be spent on roads. Already at the formation, there was therefore a clear thought that it was time to invest more money in roads and less in railways.

We can do another exercise. The State Secretary raised what is happening here and now. Yesterday, Trafikverket interrupted the procurement of two of the Ostlänkens stages because the costs had skyrocketed. So, quite a lot is still happening that shows that Trafikverket is too large to fulfill its mission.

It has become clear in the debate that we have an authority with an all-too-large mandate, and since it was formed, people have put obstacles in its way. Now that Trafikverket, 15 years later, is struggling, or however one wants to put it, we should be able to say here in the chamber: Let us at least look at another arrangement. One could divide it into a road authority and a rail authority or something else. There are solutions for how they have built up Trafikverket's operations in, for example, Norway that we could look at. We do not need to take a position today on exactly how it would look. But it should be time now, after 15 years and after all the criticism the authority is constantly subjected to, to look at another solution for Trafikverket.

Trafikverket is filling the gap today, as has been said. My hope is that Trafikverket does not become a systembolagsmyndighet, but that we have another arrangement in the country when that occurs. It could be two agencies, or whatever it may be, that handle the assignment significantly better than what Trafikverket can manage today with its structure and governance.

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Statsrådet Andreas Carlson (KD)

Madam Speaker! Then I shall please Adrian Magnusson: That is exactly what we are doing. We are looking at Norway and the other Nordic neighboring countries. We are open to alternative financing and alternative implementation. We have given a mandate to Trafikverket itself to develop proposals on which sections, objects, or projects could be suitable for a different execution. We will appoint an OPS investigator who will develop models for various proposals. It can be quite open; we will return with the directives. It could be pure OPS, but there are other examples in Norway and in the connection between Sweden and Denmark that one can look at.

All this, our government has begun to launch. I hope for very strong support for this in the chamber, also from the Social Democrats given Adrian Magnusson's contribution in the debate, so that we get alternative implementation methods and alternative financing. It is needed so that we get both more money for infrastructure and, through benchmarking, more infrastructure for the money.

Thank you for the commitment and for the debate!

The interpellation debate was hereby concluded.

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