SHARE
COPY LINK

PUBLIC TRANSPORT

New law gives transport operators the green light

The government is to allow private transport companies to provide public bus services, in a bid to improve services and prompt people to use public transport.

New law gives transport operators the green light

“We see opportunities to complement other public transport and we are planning a number of pilot projects in 2012,” confirms Ingvar Ryggesjö, Information Officer at Swebus in daily newspaper Metro.

The new law on public transport came into effect on January 1st but ever since the initiative was launched, not just Swebus, but many companies have shown an interest and have enrolled for the government’s pilot project.

Authorities believe co-operation between public and private organisations will be beneficial to all areas of Sweden, although the pilot project for 2012 is primarily focused on the Öresund region.

“Many commute across the channel and they don’t have a great deal of choice in terms of transport operators,” said Ryggesjö.

It is a matter of finding public transport connections where it would be profitable to run such business.

However, the time it takes to travel still remains an issue and in some areas it is faster to travel from A to B by car.

“In the Stockholm region we are interested to see the impact on the cross-link connections, such as the Täby-Kista line. It takes fifteen minutes to go by car but nearly an hour to travel by public transport,” says Rolf Kolmodin, Communications Officer at public transport operator Nobina to Metro.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

TRAVEL NEWS

Swedish rail company SJs site crashes on Christmas tickets release

The booking site of Sweden's state-owned rail company SJ crashed on Tuesday evening after the company released long-awaited tickets for the Christmas period.

Swedish rail company SJs site crashes on Christmas tickets release

The company on Tuesday night released tickets for the period from December 11th to March 12th next year, only to see the site crash under the volume of booking requests. 

“There are enormous amounts of customers who want to buy tickets, even though it’s the middle of the night,” Lina Edström, a press officer for the company said shortly after midnight. “The home page quite simply can’t cope with responding to so many requests at the same time. 

The site started to work again a few hours later, only to crash once again as people woke up and started booking on Wednesday morning. 

“The reports we are getting is that it’s working for some people and not for others. That’s what we’re seeing as Sweden wakes up and more and more people try and get onto the site,” said Jonas Olsson, another press officer at 7.30am. 

READ ALSO:

The release of Christmas tickets in Sweden has been severely delayed because of late publication of the Swedish Transport Administration train plan for 2023, which coordinates the times for all passenger and goods trains in Sweden. 

The train plan should have been published at the start of August, giving companies 18 weeks to set tickets from December 10th. It was only released on October 19th. The administration said that it has had problems due to change over to a digital system. 

Many customers have been complaining that they have seen prices for Christmas trips double in the time it has taken them to book a ticket. 

Olsson told the TT newswire that SJ’s pricing system is based on the level of demand. 

“I understand the frustration, and we may well look at this going forward,” he said. “But even if many people have ended up in this situation, there are many others who have been able to buy cheaper tickets.” 

SHOW COMMENTS