Overview
Directive 2012/34/EU requires member countries to implement a Performance Scheme in order to incentivize railway operators and the infrastructure provider to improve the performance of the railway system, i.e. to reduce train delays. Sweden’s National Traffic Administration (Trafikverket) administers this scheme.
In July 2014, the government assigned VTI to support the National Traffic Administration in its task to further elaborate on the design of the Swedish Performance Scheme.
Funding
Results
This report concludes that for three reasons, the scheme in its current version does not have the proposed qualities:
The first is that available information about delays and their causes is not comprehensive. One example is that trains operated over a different route that originally planned are not registered by the system. While the number of occasions of this nature may be low, passengers and freight customers may at each occasion be severely affected.
Secondly, today’s system charges operators for their own delays but not for the delays that affect other operators as a consequence of break-downs etc. of the first operator’s trains. This is contrary to the Directive’s instructions.
The third concern emanates from that Trafikverket tenders all maintenance activities. Delays emanating from infrastructure failures and the concomitant performance charges are however not paid by the entrepreneurs but by Trafikverket. This stops the appropriate signals to reach the party that is best able to reduce the risk for recurrent failures.
Suggestions for the way to handle these shortcomings are also formulated.