Swedish state railways, SJ, pulled the plug on its high-speed train bid between Stockholm and Oslo, the capital of Norway. SJ said unexpected maintenance works by its Norwegian counterpart had forced it to cancel the operation.
Currently, two daily trains run from Stockholm to Oslo and vice versa. But on August 9th, SJ had been planning to launch its high-speed flagship X2000 high speed train on the line with three departures a day between the two cities.
By cutting journey times from six to four-and-a-half hours, the company had hoped to attract some of the business travellers commuting between the two capitals, who currently mostly choose to fly.
“Our plan was to increase traffic with more trains if the bid worked well,” SJ chief executive Crister Fritzson told the local media.
But with only two months left to the launch, SJ announced that the venture will not go ahead. The reason, it said, was that Norwegian Jernbaneverket, which manages the country’s railway network, at the end of March had announced plans to change overhead cables on the Lilleström-Kongsvinger line over the next two-and-a-half years.
Norway had recently decided to allocate extra funds to upgrading the Norwegian rail network, which had enabled Jernbaneverket to undertake the new maintenance work.
Photo: www.sj.se
Share on:
