Response to interpellation 2024/25:43 on the train connections to Blekinge and southeastern Sweden

Statsrådet Andreas Carlson (KD)

Madam Speaker! Magnus Manhammar has asked me a number of questions regarding the rail traffic and train connections to and from Blekinge and southeastern Sweden.

Initially, I would like to thank Magnus Manhammar for the commitment to the communications in Blekinge and southeastern Sweden. The government's starting point for infrastructure policy is that all of Sweden shall function. The conditions for living, residing and working in the entire country shall be strengthened. A well-functioning transport infrastructure strengthens both Sweden's collective competitiveness and regional development.

The government is working for a transport infrastructure that works, where the roads are intact and the trains run on time. The maintenance of the infrastructure has for a long time been allocated too few resources, while cost control has been deficient. But now that will change.

On October 3, the government submitted an infrastructure bill to the Riksdag with historically large investments in the transport infrastructure. The economic framework for the period 2026-2037 is proposed to be increased by 200 billion kronor compared to the previous planning period, to 1,171 billion kronor. The needs within the infrastructure are great, and it is necessary to make deliberate prioritizations between different measures. This means that we must maintain the existing transport system and prioritize maintenance but also invest in new infrastructure where it is needed.

After the Riksdag has processed the government bill, the government will task Trafikverket with preparing a proposal for a new national plan for the period 2026-2037. It is only in this part of the process that concrete projects and measures are investigated and analyzed.

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

Magnus Manhammar (S)

Madam Speaker! Thank you, Minister Andreas Carlson, for the answer and for your commitment to the issue! I would like to say initially that the purpose of this interpellation is not to polarize the debate and assign blame to anyone, but on the contrary, it is to extend a hand so that we can together solve the problems we see. It does not only concern Blekinge.

This interpellation concerns, above all, the railway infrastructure in Blekinge, but we see many problems in southeastern Sweden as a whole. I want to testify to my own experiences, but above all to those things that many people have contacted me about and told me about.

In Blekinge and southeastern Sweden, one can no longer count on being able to travel by train. Very many companies are having problems because of this. Our educational institutions are having problems. People can no longer count on being able to commute, for example, Kalmar-Växjö, Växjö-Karlskrona or Kristianstad-Karlskrona. Such large problems with the rail infrastructure, I have never experienced during my life of over 40 years. These are serious problems that unfortunately are here and now.

I appreciate the answer from the Minister for Infrastructure and the investments that are to be made going forward. But the problems we see here and now have tough consequences not only for the companies but above all for all those individuals who step up for us in Sweden. These are people who are passionate about something and have found a profession they want to work in, but they may have their family somewhere else and need to commute. But now it is no longer possible to commute.

What has been worrying over the past year is that it has not only been during the winter but also, not least during the summer, that we have seen these major problems. One cannot rely on the train at all. This leads to many people being forced to take the car instead, and one does not directly receive any state support to be able to commute by car, because the distances are often too short, and according to the instruments that Skatteverket has, public transport is supposed to run on time. But it does not, in fact, run on time, if it runs at all.

We have seen many road users get stuck on trains on the way or at the destination they traveled to and not be able to get home to their family or to work.

A large part of the defense's training also takes place in Blekinge. The naval base is central to the expansion of the defense now that we are also in Nato. We also have F 17, the most active air base, where the cooperation with Nato and the USA will also take place. Even there, one faces major problems with personnel supply and operations due to these very serious problems with the railway infrastructure.

I am not painting a black picture here. Rather, I am understating it. If one reads in the media and follows the debate that exists in Blekinge, one can see that this is very alarming. When SJ's press officer was asked how SJ viewed this, the press officer urged that people should refrain from certain journeys from Stockholm to Blekinge, because one could not count on arriving, at least not on time. It is clear that when SJ themselves urge this, it is extremely serious.

I have a whole battery of measures we could take beyond the infrastructure plan. It is about train maintenance, about the maintenance of the railway, and about cooperation between the different operators. Not least, it is about giving the regions more resources to develop regional public transport, so that it can also function. Today we know that the regions do not have the money they need for healthcare. Taking money from healthcare to invest in trains is not an option; instead, it is, of course, saving lives in healthcare that matters.

I have a few more measures. I will return shortly in my next post with more concrete proposals that we can discuss.

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

Statsrådet Andreas Carlson (KD)

Madam Speaker! I thank Magnus Manhammar for the question, for the extended hand, and for the fact that we can have a good exchange on what the problems look like.

It would have been positive if this only applied to Blekinge, because then we might have been able to handle it faster. But unfortunately, as Magnus Manhammar describes here, nothing stays in Blekinge, and large parts of the infrastructure in Sweden suffer from a lack of functionality as a result of a lack of maintenance. One can wonder why it has become like this. Why has it arisen?

Just as the member says, the problems are here and now. Problems as large as they are now, the member has never seen before. Many recognize themselves in that description, and I share it. It is a very strained situation on the Swedish railway and also in the Swedish road network. It may be that those who feel forced to take the car also have to travel on roads that have poor maintenance and are thus affected by both traffic safety and accessibility problems.

Let me take a small historical look back with the railway as the starting point. Two-thirds of the Swedish railway is 100 years old or older. Traffic on the Swedish railway has increased very significantly in recent years. It is a demand-driven market that has led to an increase in traffic. There are many regions that have had the opportunity to increase public transport. There has been a demand to travel more by train, which is fundamentally positive.

So, there will be increased traffic on a very old track, and an additional circumstance is that maintenance has been neglected for decades. This is a problem that has built up, a mountain that has been built over a very long time. In terms of kronor, the mountain today amounts to 92 billion kronor in neglected railway maintenance. It is therefore actually no coincidence that the railway does not function if one consistently ignores maintaining it and operates it more heavily. If one takes into account that it was largely built 100 years ago, it is perhaps not strange that it looks the way it does.

The strange thing is that this has been allowed to happen despite the fact that even ten years ago there were concrete proposals on how one could sharpen railway maintenance and that one could increase maintenance at times when it does not disturb traffic. These proposals have been lying there but - perhaps for political reasons; I do not know - have not been taken further.

This is what I saw when I took office as Minister for Infrastructure and Housing. I have also gathered large parts of the sector: Trafikverket, the large train companies such as SJ and also the maintenance contractors, who are responsible for a large part of the maintenance, as well as freight buyers. I believe it was Volvo who, at one of the meetings, said that if one needs to increase the pace of the maintenance for some weeks, they could adjust their production slightly.

Interaction is needed to ensure that we can maintain the railway while we are, after all, dependent on the traffic being able to continue. One cannot close all the railway to maintain it for a number of decades and resolve the problem, but we must also meet the expectation that exists. We gave this assignment to Trafikverket about a year ago. Measures have now been taken not only to fill the bag with money for maintenance but also to get more maintenance for the money.

Measures are being taken. It is exchanges that are being swapped and tracks that need to be managed. But it will take time to reverse the development as a result of it having been so neglected for many decades.

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

Magnus Manhammar (S)

Madam Speaker! Thank you, Minister, for this contribution! I think it is constructive and contributes to the tone we need to solve this together. It is very good. As said, we need to see less polarization and more solving of the problems.

I think it is very good that the Minister brings up that there is a maintenance debt of 90 billion. But in politics, here in the chamber, in the committees, and in the cooperation between the government and the opposition, there is more polarization and more of throwing negative things at each other. Can we not instead meet and agree on how we should solve the debt and find financing for it that can apply both when you govern and when we govern, so that it does not need to be something we do not agree on? Then we can actually do something. There is a great interest in that, at least from our side. It would at least help Blekinge, and it would also help the other regions in Sweden. We are very happy to do this.

This with maintenance contractors, I think is very interesting. I know many. Many who work as contractors, who work at Trafikverket, who drive and work on trains, and also many of our road users contact me. Much is testified to the fact that the problem with maintenance is the privatization of it - unfortunately. It has been discussed previously in the chamber, not just by the minister and me, but by many others. We have raised it in different contexts. I have also spoken about it at home in local media.

There is something that is often described when it comes to the privatization of maintenance. It is that previously, it might have been a mile or two that a specific operator was responsible for, i.e., a state-employed person. That operator had constant oversight of all switches and replaced and installed the electrical resistors that perhaps lasted the longest. There might have been an electrical resistor at a switch that could last for ten years, and if one put an extra reserve next to it, it could last for 20 years. If one broke, the other was switched in. It was not in the way it is now.

Now it is short-term procurements with different contractors who don't even come from the region, who have never been there before, and who don't even live nearby. It takes a very long time to get there. One knows that one might lose the procurement already after a year or two. According to the witness accounts I receive, one then often puts in a resistance that lasts for five years or sometimes maybe only three years. One knows that one earns more by having that resistance, because the subcontracting company wants to earn as much money as possible. One is not supposed to do as good an operation as possible for Trafikverket, because one does not know if one wins the next procurement.

There is, therefore, a short-sightedness in this. It is also quite short-sighted for those who work with it. They do not know if they will have the same jobs after two years.

The short-sightedness in the maintenance is very problematic. I would say that it is problematic if one privatizes and divides infrastructure into different parts.

This is something of public interest. It is in the regions' interest, Madam Speaker. All of us in this room have an interest in it, and it is the interest of the whole of Sweden.

This is a question where we would really like to reach an agreement. There are no political dividing lines here or any kind of moat for being right-wing or left-wing. Let us solve the problem and listen to those who work with it!

I personally have several acquaintances who work as subcontractors and who work at Trafikverket. They constantly testify about these problems, which occur every day. They want to find a long-term perspective in this.

This is just one of the things that we would like to see.

I can imagine that the minister, just like me, travels a lot in Europe. What one often sees out in Europe is that the rail infrastructure is much more extensive. It is often double track, and there are at least passing tracks in all places where it is needed. With us, there is double track in very few places, and there are passing tracks in a few places where it obviously is needed. But there is a much greater need.

I would like to hear how the Minister views that question - in addition to this with the maintenance. How does it look with that expansion? The investments that are announced here do not mean very many more double tracks for the time being and not very many more passing tracks. Can we perhaps agree to do more there as well together?

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

Statsrådet Andreas Carlson (KD)

Madam Speaker! I can start with precisely the various measures regarding meeting tracks and so on. This does not appear in the infrastructure bill. This type of measures will be presented in the national plan, which the government decides on after Trafikverket has prepared proposals and, one step further back, after the Riksdag has made a decision in the chamber.

What the government proposes, however, is to raise the limit for so-called trimming measures, i.e., smaller measures that Trafikverket itself can decide on, from 100 to 150 million kronor in terms of the project's scope. When something exceeds 100 million today, it becomes a named project and involves quite a lot of administration linked to it. This fairly substantial increase – it is much more than if one had adjusted this based on inflation – means that one can hopefully get even more trimming measures. These are, therefore, slightly smaller measures, but they can have a fairly large effect, not least in Blekinge but also in other parts of the country.

It is about the type of measures - meeting tracks and extensions. It can be projects that do not cost particularly much in relation to completely new tracks but that can increase the capacity and reliability of the railway that we have. I view that very positively, but we will of course return to the exact design of this in the continued work.

I am the first to welcome a consensus as broad as possible regarding railway maintenance. However, there is one factor that has caused some maintenance contractors to be cautious about making investments in Sweden. It is precisely the political risk that it would no longer be a market in competition, such as the one we have with maintenance contractors. They can then choose to invest in other countries in Europe. I believe that is part of the explanation for why investments are not being made in more advanced machines and a more tailored fleet of machines.

This is where the Swedish Transport Administration is making great progress. I expect even more and higher momentum in this. It is about using a fleet of machinery that allows for maintenance with fewer traffic disruptions.

The question of reclaiming the entire railway maintenance in state ownership was examined by Gunnar Alexandersson in an investigation. It was the Alliance government that gave him that assignment, but he worked on it for quite many years. The summary is that it is practically impossible or unfeasible to reclaim the maintenance.

At the same time, we know that many of the maintenance contractors that are on the market today and who also work in other countries have new ways to change switches, for example. One can do it in a couple of hours over a few nights instead of blocking for track work for three days. We need to agree that we need to use that expertise.

I would view it very positively if we could achieve some form of consensus on this, so that it is not perceived as there being a political risk for companies that want to invest in and take a place in the Swedish market and who want to contribute to accelerating the upgrading of the Swedish railway.

Much also concerns the design of the contracts and how the maintenance is procured. It concerns the mandate that I referred to earlier, Madam Speaker. The Government has been very clear in the mandate to Trafikverket that they shall strengthen their ordering capacity, increase operational competence, and have procurements that align with the ambitions the Government has, namely that we shall get more maintenance for the money and be able to upgrade the railway.

It is an ongoing work. It would be very positive if we could achieve a political truce regarding railway maintenance. This naturally means that Trafikverket increases the control, but it does not mean that we close the railway maintenance market to all those contractors who have the competence to participate and contribute.

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

Magnus Manhammar (S)

Madam Speaker! Thank you, Minister, for the answer! I truly welcome this. Madam Speaker and everyone are welcome to sit down and discuss these issues together. It would be very good if we could find time for that – preferably at the regional level but of course also at the national level.

I hear testimonies from subcontractors and contractors who are involved in the railway maintenance. They actually do not want to work in the private companies. It is clear that those who own the companies and make money from it are very interested in this. But the employees feel an insecurity in their employment. They feel that they cannot do their best job, because they are not given the conditions for it by their managers at the companies. The companies are driven by profit, not by doing the best maintenance of the railway. That is the problem.

I would say: Nothing is impossible. This has been state-run before. We can change the whole world if we want to. We have joined Nato. We are building up defense. It is clear that we can save the subway in Sweden together. It is no mystery. It is clear that we can have it in public hands if we want to, and it can of course also be in private hands, as it is now.

What we would have gladly needed from the Blekinge side – I would like to hear the minister's view on this – is slightly longer stretches. Often there are many different train contractors. One has one stretch. Another has the next stretch. A third has the third stretch. It could be the same. The regions often want slightly longer stretches, but they do not have the finances for it.

I looked a bit at the money that has been allocated here. The regions have asked for 20 billion for next year's budget, and they received just over 3 billion. At the same time, there are 27 billion in tax cuts from the government's side. I think like this: If one had used these 27 billion to help the regions and to make many of the other investments, one might have been able to solve these problems already now, in the short term.

I want to hear the minister's view on that. It simply matters what we spend the money on. As said, there is no polarization here, but rather it is about being constructive. What could we have used these funds for, or how would we have solved it together?

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

Statsrådet Andreas Carlson (KD)

Madam Speaker! I thank you for the debate.

When it comes to how much money can be spent on railway maintenance, Trafikverket has made the assessment that what the government is now proposing to be allocated for railway maintenance for the coming year is the maximum that the system can manage. Even if more money had been found elsewhere, the risk, if one puts it that way, would have been that Trafikverket simply had to pay that money back, and I do not think that is a satisfactory arrangement.

We need to see how we can get even more maintenance for the money. How do we get more maintenance out, and, was I about to say, how can we get rid of more money? Even if it is not about that, the question is how we can invest in maintenance at an even higher rate than what is possible today given how the situation looks.

That is the background to the assignment that Trafikverket final reported on at the beginning of this week. They can point to measures that have been taken already this year with the exchange of strategic levers and measures that have been made as a result of the very clear government mandate so that passengers as quickly as possible, already this year and next year, shall notice that a change is occurring in the right direction.

As this debate has demonstrated, Madam Speaker, this is something that has been built up over a very long time. It will take time to reverse it, but I am pleased with the approach that we shall now jointly attempt to tackle this with as much momentum as possible. There is a government bill on the Riksdag's table, where we propose to maximize the maintenance of the railway. I hope, of course, that we can achieve such a broad consensus for the proposals we have in that bill, and I naturally welcome continued dialogue.

These are important issues for the whole of Sweden to function. I understand the commitment to the rural areas that Magnus Manhammar represents. That commitment is something I believe he shares with every Member of Parliament in this chamber. Therefore, it is very important to me that we now work on and break the destructive trend of not investing enough in maintenance, by both ensuring that we get more money for maintenance and that we get more maintenance for the money.

The interpellations debate was hereby concluded.

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