It was in mid-August that SJ announced that the night train service between Umeå/Åre and Gothenburg will be closed. According to the company, the reason is that the routes are unprofitable.
73,000 signatures
Shortly after SJ’s announcement, a petition was started to save the night trains to northern Sweden. Almost 73,000 people have signed there.
The night trains
The express train can take over the night trains between Gothenburg and Åre after SJ
The county’s politicians are fighting for the night trains – demanding a meeting with the infrastructure minister
Now the Umeå student union joins the critics. They not only want to see that train traffic is secured by purchasing the route, they want the government to give SJ a special social mission where profitability should not control the supply.
“Indispensable social function”
– If the traffic is procured, there is nothing to indicate that this will make the route more profitable or prevent it from being shut down again, as history with the Narvik-Stockholm route has already shown, says Göthlin and continues:
– A functioning infrastructure in Norrland must be seen as an indispensable social function.
Infrastructure Minister Andreas Carlson has previously told SVT that the issue lies with SJ:
“The Swedish Transport Agency’s assessment is that it is not currently relevant on the Gothenburg-Umeå and Gothenburg-Duved route as there are higher priority efforts. For travelers who want to take the night train, there is still the option of doing so via Stockholm,” he wrote at the time.