Trafikverket, the Swedish Transport Administration, is taking over freight wagon shunting services at eight shunting yards from Green Cargo. The move is supposed to make shunting more accessible to other rail freight companies, one of which filed a complaint with the Trafikverket because Green Cargo refused to deal with its wagons.
Freight company Hector Rail reported Green Cargo to the Swedish Competition Authority over two years ago, because the latter company refused to provide shunting services for its wagons. Subsequently, Hector Rail says that it lost a customer to the state-owned Green Cargo. The competition authority did not put any blame on Green Cargo, but told Trafikverket to take up the issue.
The issue has been a topic of discussion for more than 20 years already. But now the Trafikverket is finally taking matters into its own hands. “After much deliberation, we have now decided to establish a shunting service at the eight shunting yards,” a representative of the agency tells Swedish media. “We want to give all train companies access to the possibility of marshaling freight cars.”
Capacity for everyone
“We want to make the capacity available to everyone and we want to create the same conditions for all companies to strengthen their competitiveness by gaining access to the marshalling yards”, the representative adds. “Primarily, it concerns the planning and management of the operations at the railway yards, that is, the operations that are carried out in the marshalling towers. The operators will continue to be responsible for the actual vehicle movements at the railway yard.”
The current arrangement has worked for a long time, because there are very few rail companies that operate single wagon load traffic, and therefore, haven’t needed shunting services at Sweden’s yards.
Before Trafikverket can successfully take over the operations, it will need to learn from Green Cargo’s experience, the agency says. “It is Green Cargo that has the experience and competence. It’s a completely new activity for us at the Swedish Transport Administration.”
Green Cargo positive
“Purely conceptually, we see no disadvantages with this,” Stephan Ray, communications manager at Green Cargo, tells Swedish media. “The change means in practice that we no longer have to do what has always been the Swedish Transport Administration’s mission and responsibility. How it turns out operationally is of course too early to comment on, as well as the production costs.”