Minister for Infrastructure Andreas Carlson (KD) was not present at the government's summer coffee on Thursday to comment on the criticism after the recent train chaos. He instead referred in a written comment to the fact that the Swedish Transport Administration is working "intensively to address the problems".
On the other hand, Minister for the Environment and Climate Romina Pourmokhtari (L) regrets that train travelers who choose an environmentally friendly mode of transport are punished by being stranded for eleven hours in the way they have done in the last day.
– It's of course very bad that you have to sit there for so long with a lukewarm tetra pack as comfort. But we are addressing the underlying problem, which is the signal errors, says Pourmokhtari.
New signaling system
While the previous government has focused on high-speed trains, we are focusing on improving the current system. Signal errors are a classic cause of train stops, so we must address the signal errors, she says.
The government is planning a comprehensive investment in a new signaling system for the railway, and presented last year an investment of 15 billion kronor extra for maintenance and development of roads and railways during the years 2025 and 2027.
We should have addressed this issue with signal errors much earlier in Sweden. We hope that we will get a reliable system when our policy has been implemented so that we do not have to end up in the situations we do in train traffic again, says Romina Pourmokhtari.
”Takes time”
The government has had three years to address the problems with train stops. Why haven't you done anything about this before?
Investments in infrastructure and railways take time. We now have 1,700 measures being implemented this year on our rail network, something that in itself creates difficulties when you want to reroute train traffic. We are now doing what should have been done a long time ago, says Romina Pourmokhtari.
