Green, yellow, red… In front of the imposing station square of Uppsala, the former royal capital located 70 kilometers north of Stockholm, the parade of buses is almost uninterrupted. A well-orchestrated broom on 71 lines and 2,800 stops serving the main neuralgic points of this small Swedish student town of 200,000 inhabitants, the fourth population basin of the Scandinavian kingdom. Each year, the local bus network, the main mode of public transport, welcomes 28 million passengers who have the chance to board modern, comfortable coaches with a long-distance travel atmosphere, far from the saturated and faded vehicles that we known in the major French cities.
The icing on the cake, they are all “green”, since not a drop of oil is used on the entire network. “We started the conversion about 20 years ago. In Sweden, the distances can be long, that’s why we still have 5 million cars for 10 million inhabitants. But we are correcting that collectively”, explains Sven Andersen, local manager of Keolis, in the bus that takes us to the depot, located on the outskirts of the city.
A green note for drivers
Since June, it is indeed the French operator (25% market share in the country) which has recovered the Uppsala operating contract, worth 540 million euros over nine years. At this price, the SNCF subsidiary (which holds 70% of the capital) and the Caisse de depot et de placement du Québec (30%), which is very well established in Sweden (Stockholm, Gothenburg, Boras, etc.), is awaited at the turn by the organizing authority of the local transport (AOT). And Keolis did not take long to take possession of the premises. In one weekend, the teams changed 200 buses to replace them with brand new models running on biodiesel and biogas, the only two engines used in the agglomeration.
Drivers arrive on site at 4 a.m. Everyone receives an environmental rating based on their conduct
SP // The Express
Unlike France, the operator is in fact the owner of the rolling stock and can therefore quickly drive change. Keolis placed an order a year ago with Scania and Volvo, two local manufacturers. And if the latter have seen their supply chain disrupted by the war in Ukraine, part of the production being carried out in Poland, the bet has been met without disruption of service for users. “It’s a significant investment for us (about 80 million euros, according to our information), because the prices of clean vehicles are very high. It takes 250,000 euros for a bus running on biogas, 450,000 euros for a hybrid and 500,000 to 750,000 euros for a new electric model”, indicates Sven Andersen arriving at the Uppsala terminus. The energy transition is expensive!
In the car park dedicated to employees, each space has an electrical terminal to recharge your vehicle… or heat it when the thermometer starts to dip. Because yes, winter is harsh in this region. From October, we regularly flirt with zero, snow and ice arrive in December, and the mercury can drop to minus 20 degrees on the coldest days of the year. To save energy and limit the carbon footprint, solar panels have been installed on the gigantic roof of the complex, which allows the site to be 50% self-sufficient. Water, essential for daily cleaning of the buses, is recycled at more than 80%. Reprocessed with ozone, it circulates in a closed circuit for a consumption of 1,500 liters per day.
On the roof of the Uppsala bus depot, solar panels supply the site with electricity. In the background, the two large white biofuel tanks.
SP // The Express
Inside the building, driver comfort is far from being neglected. They are even treated like startupers… with Scandinavian sauce. Sauna, fully equipped weights room, small indoor hockey pitch… We don’t skimp on the means to keep employees on site, the early risers of whom push the door at 4 o’clock. An effective argument while the whole of Europe is looking for drivers. This is why salaries are also attractive: more than 2,000 euros net per month at the start of a career. “If your drivers are happy to work, it pulls the quality of service up. We have also set up a small internal competition by awarding an environmental score based on their driving. It’s very stimulating”, underlines Sven Andersen , which has already seen significant discrepancies.
Public transport is mostly private
Further south, in the capital Stockholm, buses weave their way between the tram network and a string of cycle paths. But here too the local authorities have not skimped on the means to convert their public transport. For 2021 alone, the Region’s investment budget was 1 billion euros, including 650 million to modernize transport and 380 million devoted to the expansion of the metro, which shines with its cleanliness and modernity. .
To finance this transition, 50% of the budget is drawn from taxes levied by the Stockholm Region. The rest comes from the part paid by the users. And, let’s face it, it’s expensive. Count 4 euros for a single ticket valid for 75 minutes. As for the unlimited monthly subscription, it will cost you a hundred euros in Stockholm, or 25 to 30% more expensive than in Paris or Lyon. With a very Scandinavian particularity, public transport is above all private. “About 95% of our lines are privatized. The politicians of the Stockholm Region are convinced that these operators are better placed to manage them and make them profitable,” says a spokesperson for the Region.
Moreover, these investments are visible to users. About ten minutes from downtown Stockholm, the Tomteboda bus depot is a huge brand new complex, “one of the largest in all of Northern Europe”, boasts one of its employees. But by the admission of one manager, “the site is oversized”. Never mind, it was the public authorities who financed it. Because yes, the bus depots do not belong to the operators as is the case in France with the RATP for example, but well at the AOT. And the big green shift is not without pain. “This conversion to renewable fuels has cost us dearly over the years, recognizes Johan Böhlin, fuel specialist at the traffic administration of the Region of Stockholm (Trafikförvaltningen). But with the progressive electrification of the fleet, it will cost us less in the future, because electric buses are more economical.”
The country will have to strengthen its electricity capacities
In the meantime, the biofuel pumps at the Fredriksdal bus depot, south of Stockholm, continue to run. They are directly connected by an underground pipeline to a neighboring energy plant, a sort of hub that recovers urban waste on one side and in return provides energy for the district. However, with galloping inflation (8.5% over one year in July) and the war in Ukraine, the prices of biogas and biodiesel are soaring. The bill is starting to be as salty as Baltic herring.
A bus fills up with biogas at a depot in downtown Stockholm
SP // The Express
“In July, we paid 800,000 euros for biofuel, compared to the usual 550,000 euros. It weighs on the company’s accounts”, confides a manager of the bus depot, who hopes to see new electric buses arriving soon in more than fifty that Keolis has just received in the capital. “Our roadmap is that the 2,200 buses in Stockholm [la RATP en a 4 700, dont plus de la moitié roule encore au gazole, NDLR] will all be electric by 2035”, recalls Johan Böhlin.
To support the transition, the country will have to strengthen its electrical capacities, mainly drawn today from hydraulics (45%) and nuclear (30%). Moreover, public opinion has radically changed its opinion on the atom. “The population has become pro-nuclear, which was not the case twenty years ago. But if we already want to reach 60% of electric buses in Stockholm within five years, we have a big challenge on production and electricity distribution”, warns Jan Kilstrom, CEO of Keolis Sweden. Moreover, the country is already preparing for a tense winter. Due to the prolonged shutdown of one of its six nuclear reactors, the Swedish electricity transport manager, Svenska kraftnät, has just warned the authorities against a “real risk”… of power cuts !
Sébastien Pommier, in Uppsala and Stockholm (Sweden)