MED: Felaktiga modeller styr regeringens infrastrukturplan

Fredrik Clemens, welcome. Thank you very much. You have looked at models for city development, for how traffic systems should be built, and discovered that these models are not entirely correct. What did you find? Well, a few weeks ago the National Infrastructure Plan was released, which was proposed by Andreas Carlsson, the leader of the Christian Democrats, where it is required that we invest in a number of socio-economic infrastructure investments. This mainly concerns roads and railways, and in that investment a number of important roads have not been included. One of them is Östlig Connection in Stockholm, which is a road that is being fought for for various reasons. A report by Trafikverket says that Östlig Connection is no longer socio-economic profitable. That sounds very suspicious, and to understand what has happened, which means that some roads have been removed due to socio-economic reasons, what they have done is that they have adjusted the models for how to calculate the effect of these investments. And what has happened is that they have made a number of assumptions about the models, including that it will be more expensive to drive a car, that much fewer will want to drive a car, and these assumptions are simply not correct. So this means that they have misguided the way through model error. And it is unclear who is behind these assumptions, and why they have done them, but they point out that the EU expects emissions reductions in the future, which will mean a lot of things. But of course this is not at all in line with the data and studies that exist, about how the interest in cars looks like. This is very misleading, so they have done something strange there. Trafikverket and Andreas Karlsson came out with this a few weeks ago, and what they said was that the new plan is based entirely on getting as much out as possible for the money. This is based on these models you are talking about, but then these models should be wrong. What is it that is wrong when it comes to car use, and how should it be done instead? Let's start like this. In short, how it should be, requires a lot of work. This has just been identified, but let's start with what is definitely wrong with the models. The first thing is that they estimate that the costs of driving a car will be much higher, and this is motivated by, for example, higher tax rates and higher fuel prices. But now it is the case that this national infrastructure plan requires roads that will be built far ahead in time, and that the fuel prices for electric cars would increase, that sounds very strange. So they have not taken that into account, and on the contrary, the fuel prices will decrease. So it is the opposite data they have put into the models against what is expected to happen. The second thing is that they talk about the car prices going to drop because, for example, Ferry wants to drive a car. But that is not true. There are a lot of people who do studies, for example Universum studies in Sweden, the youth barometer, where they ask how the car interest looks like among young people. It is increasing. They look at statistics on how many driving licences among young people. It is increasing. They look at how the car interest looks like among FIA, Görde and MTF, and the car interest is increasing. So they have come to the conclusion that Ferry wants to drive a car. That is completely insane. So all the assumptions in these models are wrong, which means that the national infrastructure plan is wrong. And what has happened is that they have previewed investments in rail traffic instead of roads. And the big problem here, regardless of whether you think that rail is fantastic or railway, and I like all infrastructures, is that the social and economic benefit becomes substantial when you have manipulated the models, which is a disaster. Because when you make social and economic profitable infrastructure investments, it means that you get more money than you invest. And this has caused the national infrastructure plan, for unclear reasons, to fail. Which means that you simply choose not to make investments that are directly profitable. So the national infrastructure plan expects that the car interest will go down, but in reality we will probably see something completely different. Can you say something about how big these differences are? No, it's a bit premature to say. What is important here is that this comes to the table so that we can revise these investments. The national infrastructure plan that Andreas Carlsson for the Christian Democrats has announced, it is based on incorrect premises, and it has been reviewed thoroughly, and I assume, without knowing, that he of course does not know what the parameters are when he has used these models, when he has calculated. So I give him the benefit of the doubt. But it has to be on the table, and you have to take this seriously, that you can't manipulate models in this way because you want to run a political agenda. Sweden has had a long history of government activism, and this is wrong, I'm not saying it is, but it is definitely wrong. And it damages the citizens in the long run. It is very problematic for the citizens to make incorrect infrastructure investments that are not optimal. The national infrastructure plan runs over 12 years. It also has record sums in it. You talk about 12 years, and then you have to put about 100 billion per year on the infrastructure. What are the consequences if these models now turn out to be wrong? In the previous calculation on the most profitable roads you can build in Sweden, the repayment has been around factor 10. That is extreme in itself, how you have been able to let it run like that. If you put in 1 million to build this road, you get 10 million back. And if you instead let it be and build that type of road that runs net plus, and put it on other types of traffic that might not be as profitable, and often it's trains in Sweden, Sweden is a very grass country, where trains are hard to count home in many respects, then it means that we simply lose the opportunity to get a better social economy, and that is for example, that we have more care for the elderly, we get worse care, we get less money for healthcare, school, defense and police. So this is very serious. And I think the numbers you are talking about, 100 billion per year, that is substantial numbers. And it should be said that this is a situation where we have a gigantic infrastructure debt, the real estate market is screaming for improved infrastructure, especially roads. And to do this type of manipulation is almost sabotage in my world. And it is extremely unfortunate that it has not come up before. What does it mean then? What do you get for little roads compared to what you need? What consequences do you get for cities and for business? The reason we have roads from the beginning, is because we want to increase profitability, that is to say that we take a truck that delivers goods, instead of it coming to four places a day to stand in queues, it comes to five. There will be higher efficiency in the economy, and that drives the growth. And it is the growth that finances all our tax revenue. So exactly how much it affects all these road choices, it's hard to say, but it's about billions of crowns, that is, it's about billions of crowns per year, that you miss here, in both tax revenue and growth. And that is very problematic there. Have you talked to the Road Authority about this? What kind of response do you get on this computer? No, I have chosen that, since this is such an urgent situation, and it is urgent given that the national infrastructure plan has been launched, I have raised this with Brett, for example, with you and a number of other media, to get a response. And then, of course, the important thing here is that Andreas Carlsson, the christian lawyer responsible for this, takes over here. And then, of course, I will hear from the Road Authority and give explanations, but you can't wait with this, this is too urgent to just let it be. So I will get in touch with them, and interrogate them about why they have done this. And we have a situation in Stockholm now, where the majority has launched their budget, where the Social Democrats of the Green Party and the Left Party are investing 500 million crowns to reduce the income for the village, with the result of reduced economic activity. And this is not a problem either. It is a huge problem when you don't understand the connection between infrastructure and economic activity, and how it affects social development. This is serious. So we need a different attitude in these issues, which raises this on the agenda, because this is very important for Sweden's future.