The heatwave, with temperatures reaching 30 degrees in large parts of Sweden, is primarily affecting rail traffic, where the heat is causing problems with fires and sunstroke.
On Wednesday, traffic on the important western main line was briefly suspended due to a fire in the track area in Hallsberg. The risk of sun kinks is mainly on the smaller lines.
"We have not closed any lines because of the heat. What we have done is reduce the speed. Then it may still be the case that the train companies themselves choose to cancel the traffic," says Peter Jonsson.
SJ cancels
For example, SJ has canceled several departures between Gothenburg and Kalmar due to the Swedish Transport Administration lowering the speed to 40 kilometres per hour, which makes traffic complicated on parts of the line that have single tracks.
It is also chaotic between Stockholm and Gothenburg. There, the journey time is longer than usual due to the risk of sun kinks near Borås, where a derailment occurred at the end of June. Half of the traffic goes that way.
They will be up to 80 minutes late because the speed is reduced on this line where the derailment occurred, says SJ's press spokesperson Anders Edgren.
The other half of the traffic between Stockholm and Gothenburg goes via Alingsås, where passengers can change to a bus.
Challenging
Additional cases of bleeding asphalt on roads, where the binder that holds the asphalt together softens and expands, have been reported from Västernorrland.
These are incidents and we have resolved them. These are small things we have to go out and deal with. But we don't have a traffic jam at the moment.
Peter Jonsson describes the situation as challenging.
We have good preparedness. The challenge is that we can't know exactly where things are going to happen. It's not like a storm over the west coast that moves in. Then you know where it's going to happen. This can happen over large areas, so we have to have a high level of preparedness in all regions.
This weekend, significantly cooler weather is expected across the country, with rain and wind in the southern parts of Sweden.
