While she stood crying on a train platform in an unfamiliar city last Tuesday, the 11-year-old’s parents and police believed she had gone missing. When the news came out that a conductor had made the girl get off the train because she did not have a ticket—public anger ignited across Sweden exacerbating public discontent with Sweden’s national train system.
This week’s case brought to the fore, the dissatisfaction that has been brewing for years over the quality of the Swedish railway service, which has been rated as the second most poorly maintained railway system in Europe.
In April, the 70-year-old chairman of the state-run railway system, SJ, which still dominates the industry, was politely forced to resign after nine years, officially because a new long-term chairman was needed. At a press conference after his resignation, Ulf Adelsohn sharply criticized the way the railway system has been run over the last 25 years, calling it “a playground for ignorant politicians.”
The company has been struggling financially for several years, but Adelsohn’s resignation came in the wake of a second consecutive winter marred by huge transportation problems with far more delayed and canceled trains than usual.
This year the conservative government assigned 800 million kronor (about US$120 million) for extra maintenance work, but Adelsohn and other experts, said that the railway system is so rundown that it would need three times that amount, yearly, for the next 10 or 15 years, to get a handle on the technical issues causing the delays and cancellations.
In early 2010, a war of words erupted between the SJ CEO, Jan Forsberg, and the responsible politicians, when harsh winter weather caused extreme disruptions all over the country.
The railway CEO said at a press conference that Sweden is the second worst country in Europe when it comes to maintaining its railways, and that the system’s capacity has not grown enough to serve the increase in traffic.
He blamed the problems on a lack government funding. Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt later commented sarcastically on the weather-related problems that “winter is one of our four seasons.”
Apart from delays and canceled trains, more serious incidents in recent years have also damaged the reputation of the Swedish railways in general, and SJ’s reputation in particular.
In 2010, one person was killed and 17 injured when a high-speed train collided with a maintenance vehicle in Kimstad in central Sweden. A lack of adequate security measures was blamed for the accident.
In the summer of that same year, a malfunctioning train was left standing on the track in the sweltering heat for seven hours, and the passengers were not allowed to leave for security reasons.
Eventually, when people started fainting and suffering heat stroke, a passenger shattered a window with a fire ax, and the passengers all left, according to a report in the Swedish daily newspaper, Aftonbladet.
An editorial published Thursday in another Swedish daily, quoted a survey by Swedish Internet polling company Yougov, where Swedes were asked to rate 26 different travel companies. Only the controversial Irish budget airline Ryanair got worse ratings on quality, customer satisfaction, and reputation.
