A total of 96,400 passenger trains were operated during the month. The Swedish Transport Administration emphasizes that this was the highest number of passenger trains to run in the country in one month.
As we now catch up on neglected maintenance at record speed and more trains continue to run on the Swedish railway network, punctuality will improve, says Minister of Infrastructure Andreas Carlson (KD).
Punctuality (measured as less than six minutes late) is the highest for March since 2021. Cancelled trains are not included in the statistics, which has previously been criticized.
It is mainly long-distance and express trains that drag down the statistics. Here, only 77.8 percent of the 8,075 trains arrived on time. More than one in five trains was therefore at least six minutes late.
The goal for the railway industry is 95 percent punctuality.
I expect punctuality to increase as we get more maintenance work out of the way.
A concern ahead of the summer is so-called track running, where unauthorized persons, for example, cross the tracks. Last year, 10,000 trains were delayed as a result. In March, it caused 700 delays.
Track running primarily puts people's lives at risk, but it also slows down both punctuality and the pace of maintenance work. "Stop going onto the tracks" is a very clear call from me for this summer, Carlson says.
