Government should take care of railway maintenance – Dodgens Stadium

Chairman Railway maintenance privatization failure. The government should no longer be responsible.

Two decades ago, the government took care of almost all railway maintenance. Today, Sweden is one of the most privatized and fragmented maintenance in Europe. The patch did not succeed. As the number of employees required to carry out maintenance work has decreased, the municipality has increased.

At the beginning of the millennium, systemic change began, but the big change came in 2010 when the new authority, the Swedish Transport Administration, was created. Its task was to purchase railway maintenance. At the same time, Banverket’s production was renamed Infranord AB Limited.

The Swedish Transport Administration has no authority to make any maintenance under its own auspices. This led to the loss of the power established by the National Audit Office.

This makes it difficult to assess the condition of the railways and determine whether the costs of the purchased contracts are reasonable.

From 1980 to 2020, the number of railway technicians decreased from 7,257 to about 3,800.

In addition, emergency adjustment was not planned. Each effort is unique, which makes clarity in contracts impossible.

Three major companies, Infranard AB, Dutch Structon and the Norwegian NRC Group, currently maintain the railways. For these, there are incentives to prioritize emergency care over preventive spending and not to do more than what is stated in the contracts. The conflict between transport policy goals and the company’s quest to make money is obvious.

The procurement system also led to continued appeals. Nowadays, it is customary for appeals to take place before the tender deadline. The golden age for companies is whether they can be forced to extend the contract. Then they often have to work on the current account. This is a blow to companies, but at the expense of taxpayers

Continuing appeals have created the need to legalize railway maintenance. The number of lawyers in Swedish traffic management and related companies has increased exponentially. At the same time, the number of people doing actual maintenance is declining. From 1980 to 2020, the number of railway technicians decreased from 7,257 to about 3,800. One consequence of this was an increase in train delays, which, according to the Swedish Transport Administration, cost the community $ 5 billion a year.

Switzerland tops the list of trains arriving on time. There, the government assumes overall responsibility for railways and railway maintenance. In other countries – the United Kingdom, New Zealand and most recently Norway – the state has withdrawn much of its responsibility for railway maintenance after a previous marketing failure.

In Sweden, left parties have always preferred to invest money in railway maintenance over those on the right.

But that is not enough.

The government must take strong control. Stefan Löfven promised this during the 2014 election campaign, and this should be one of the election promises of this year.

(The author of the article wrote a report to Seko Infranord, which provides further facts on the issue. See Here.)